AMERICAN  MEN  OF;  BETTERS  * 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 

BROWSING  ROOM 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


y-2 


amcrican  jEen  of 

WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 


SImmcan  S®tn  of  Sletterg 


WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS 


WILLIAM  P.jTRENT 

or  HISTORY  is  THB  UXTVKBUTY  or  THZ  SOUTH 


BOSTON   AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

£I)i-  liiUi-rsiDc  press 


PREFACE. 


THE  following  are  the  chief  sources  on  which  I 
have  relied  in  the  preparation  of  this  biography :  — 

1.  About    twenty  pages   of  memoranda   jotted 
down  by  Mr.  Simms,  probably  forming  the  com 
mencement  of  the  "elaborate  autobiography"  to 
which  Allibone  refers. 

2.  About  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  letters 
addressed  by  Simms  to  Hayne,  Beverley  Tucker, 
John  J.  Bockie,  W.  H.  Ferris,  W.  Porcher  Miles, 
and  others. 

3.  More  than  one  thousand  letters  addressed  to 
Simms  by  correspondents  from   all  parts   of  the 
Union,  covering  well  the   period    from   1845  to 
1870.     These  letters  were  given  to  Mr.  W.  Haw 
kins  Ferris,  of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  whose  son  and 
namesake  kindly  placed  them  at  my  disposal. 

4.  Letters  written  to  myself  by  personal  friends 
of  Mr.  Simms  in  answer  to  various  questions. 

5.  Notes  of  conversations  had  with  descendants 
and  friends  of  Mr.  Simms. 


Vl  PREFACE. 

6.  Biographical  details  extracted  from  Simms's 
own  writings,  from  magazines  and  newspapers,  and 
from  other  printed  sources  too  numerous  to  men 
tion.  As  the  plan  of  this  series  excludes  a  fre 
quent  use  of  footnotes,  reference  has  been  made  to 
the  above  sources  only  when  such  reference  seemed 
to  be  specially  important. 

A  word  must  be  said  with  regard  to  those  por 
tions  of  this  book  which  are  concerned  with  Simms's 
environment  rather  than  with  the  romancer  himself. 
It  may  seem  at  first  sight  that  I  have  too  frequently 
dropped  the  role  of  the  biographer  in  order  to  as 
sume  that  of  the  historian.  This  may  be  the  case, 
for  a  teacher  of  history  is  likely  to  seize  every 
chance  to  magnify  his  office.  But  I  have  an  excuse 
for  my  offense  —  if  offense  it  be  —  in  the  fact  that 
Simms  was  a  typical  Southerner,  and  that  it  would 
have  been  impossible  to  convey  a  full  idea  of  his 
character  without  constant  reference  to  the  history 
of  the  Southern  people  during  the  first  seven  de 
cades  of  the  century.  This  history  has  been  little 
studied  and  still  less  understood,  hence  an  appar 
ently  disproportionate  fullness  of  treatment  has 
been  required.  It  is  not  for  me  to  say  how  far  I 
have  succeeded  in  throwing  light  upon  the  subject, 
or  in  treating  it  with  fairness ;  but  I  may  say  that 


PREFACE.  ra 

the  extended  account  I  have  given  of  Simms's  polit 
ical  career  was  introduced  with  no  desire  to  rake 
up  dead  issues  or  to  say  unpleasant  things.  I  saw 
no  way  by  which  a  conscientious  biographer  of 
Simms  could  avoid  the  mire  of  ante-bellum  poli 
tics,  so  I  waded  in  with  very  little  hope  that  I 
should  get  through  undraggled. 

In  conclusion,  I  must  return  my  thanks  to  the 
numerous  persons  who  have  kindly  assisted  me  in 
the  preparation  of  this  volume.  It  is  impossible 
to  name  all,  but  the  following  must  be  specially 
mentioned:  Mrs.  Edward  Roach,  of  Charleston, 
and  William  Gilmore  Simms,  Esq.,  of  Barn  well, 
S.  C., — children  of  Mr.  Simms,  who  have  given 
every  assistance  in  their  power;  Mrs.  Paul  H. 
Hayne ;  Dr.  F.  Peyre  Porcher,  Mr.  Samuel  Lord, 
Mr.  "W.  Gibbes  Whaley,  Mr.  Yates  Snowden,  of 
Charleston;  Miss  Pinckney,  of  the  Charleston  Li 
brary,  and  Miss  E.  L.  McCrady  for  researches 
made  in  the  same;  Professor  George  F.  Holmes, 
of  the  University  of  Virginia;  Hon.  W.  Porcher 
Miles,  of  Louisiana;  Mr.  Charles  W.  Coleman, 
of  Williamsburg,  Va. ;  Mrs.  John  J.  Bockie  and 
Mr.  W.  H.  Ferris,  of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y. ;  the  author 
ities  of  the  Virginia  State  Library,  the  Peabody 
Library,  and  the  Congressional  Library,  especially 
Mr.  David  Huteheson  of  the  latter;  and  lastly 


viii  PREFACE. 

General  James  Grant  Wilson,  of  New  York,  for 
whose  unsolicited  and  unstinted  help  my  warmest 
thanks  are  due. 

W.  P.  TRENT. 

SEWANEE,  TENH.,  November  10,  1891. 

NOTE.  —  I  find  that  in  the  footnote  on  page  261  I  have  been 
misled  into  doing  injustice  to  Col.  G.  H.  Stevens,  who  devised  the 
iron-clad  battery  at  Cummings  Point  without  suggestion  from  Mr. 
Simms. 

SKWANEE,  TUNS.,  August  21,  1893. 


WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

EARLY   YEARS. 

WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS  was  born  at  Charles 
ton,  South  Carolina,  on  the  17th  of  April,  1806. 
His  father,  who  bore  the  same  name,  emigrated  to 
Charleston  shortly  after  the  Revolution,  from  the 
little  town  of  Larne,  in  the  north  of  Ireland.  He 
was  a  mere  youth  at  the  time  of  his  coming;  and 
he  may  have  accompanied  some  one  of  his  bro 
thers,  three  of  whom  are  known  to  have  sought 
homes  in  the  new  world.  Of  these  Matthew  and 
Eli  settled  in  Tennessee,  where  they  lived  long 
lives  and  left  descendants.  James,  the  third 
brother,  settled  in  Lancaster  District,  South  Car 
olina,  and  was  the  only  one  of  his  uncles,  indeed 
of  his  father's  kinsmen,  that  the  subject  of  these 
pages  ever  saw.  He  made  some  impression  upon 
his  young  nephew  by  his  extreme  ugliness,  his 
eternal  smiles,  and  his  constant  kindness,  from 
which  characteristics,  and  from  other  facts,  it  may 
be  inferred  that  he  was  an  old  bachelor. 

Little  is  known  of  the  early  life  of  William  Gil- 


2  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

more  Simms  the  elder.  By  the  beginning  of  this 
century  he  had  engaged  in  some  mercantile  pursuit 
that  was  sufficiently  remunerative  to  allow  him  to 
think  of  marriage;  and  we  accordingly  find  in 
the  "  Times "  of  Charleston,  for  Friday  evening, 
June  1,  1804,  the  following  brief  notice :  — 

"Married,  last  evening,  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Mal- 
comson,  Mr.  William  Simms,  merchant,  to  Miss 
Harriet  Singleton,  both  of  this  place." 

There  was  some  disparity  between  the  ages  of 
the  bride  and  groom,  for  the  former  was  only  nine 
teen  and  the  latter  could  not  have  been  far  from 
forty-two.  To  her  nineteen  years  Miss  Singleton 
added  three  Christian  names,  —  Harriet  Ann  Au 
gusta.  A  badly  executed  portrait,  which  her  son 
remembered  seeing  in  his  youth,  represented  her  as 
a  fair  young  girl  of  about  seventeen,  with  sweet 
and  expressive  eyes,  and  an  artless,  gentle  counte 
nance.  She  had  a  fine  ear  for  music,  which  was 
doubtless  a  great  source  of  delight  to  her  husband, 
who  could  not  only  sing,  but  also  improvise  the 
songs  he  sang. 

Not  much  is  known  of  her  family,  save  that  she 
was  the  only  child  of  a  Mr.  John  Singleton,  who 
had  been  dead  five  years  at  the  time  of  her  mar 
riage.  There  were  two  seemingly  distinct  families 
of  Singletons  in  Charleston,  and,  curiously  enough, 
two  Harriet  Singletons,  daughters  of  two  John 
Singletons,  were  married  in  that  city  during  the 
month  of  May,  1804.  The  Singletons  with  whom 
we  have  to  deal  were  a  respectable  family,  that  had 


EARLY  TEARS.  3 

removed  from  Virginia  to  Carolina  some  time  be 
fore  the  Revolution.  One  tombstone  in  the  grave 
yard  of  old  St.  Michael's  preserves  the  memory  of 
John  Singleton,  of  his  daughter,  and  of  his  first 
grandchild;  and  perhaps  the  curious  epitaphs,  in 
prose  and  verse,  that  adorn  it  are  due  to  the  affec 
tion,  if  not  to  the  genius,  of  his  Scotch-Irish  son- 
in-law. 

John  Singleton  left  a  widow,  whose  maiden  name 
has  escaped  discovery.  How  long  she  remained  a 
widow  is  equally  a  matter  of  doubt;  but  it  is  cer 
tain  that  she  eventually  married  a  Mr.  Gates,  and 
that  as  his  wife,  or  widow,  she  displayed  a  care 
and  affection  for  her  little  grandson  which  shall  be 
duly  commemorated  in  this  chapter. 

Of  the  personal  characteristics  of  Mr.  Simms 
the  elder  there  will  be  occasion  to  speak  hereafter ; 
but  the  few  events  that  are  known  of  his  married 
life  must  be  noted  here  with  a  brevity  proportioned 
to  their  sadness.  Early  in  1805,  a  first  son  was 
born  to  him,  and  christened  John.  In  the  fol 
lowing  spring,  as  we  have  seen,  came  the  boy  who 
was  to  bear  and  make  honorable  his  father's  name. 
But  in  the  autumn  of  this  year  a  premonition  of 
the  disasters  impending  upon  the  family  came  in 
the  death  of  the  infant  John.  Then  the  father's 
business  affairs  went  wrong,  ending  in  bankruptcy,1 
just  at  the  time  that  his  wife  died,  along  with  her 
third  child  (January  29,  1808).  The  merry  and 

1  The  court  records  of  Charleston  have  been  searched  in  vain 
for  information  on  this  point. 


4  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

stalwart  man  ceased  making  songs  and  epigrams, 
and  bent  beneath  these  cruel  blows.  In  one  week 
his  hair  became  white,  and  he  resolved  to  fly  from 
a  city  which  his  imagination  ever  afterward  pic 
tured  as  "a  place  of  tombs."  He  mounted  his 
horse,  and,  turning  his  face  toward  Tennessee,  be 
gan  a  series  of  wanderings  destined  to  have  no  little 
effect  upon  the  imagination  of  the  son  he  had  left 
behind  him. 

This  motherless  and  almost  fatherless  boy  found 
the  sympathy  of  the  one  and  the  protection  of  the 
other  in  the  guardianship  of  his  grandmother. 
Although  there  are  hints  here  and  there  of  some 
property  left  him  by  his  mother,  this  could  not 
have  been  available  at  first,  for  there  is  abundant 
testimony  to  the  poverty  of  the  little  household. 
They  managed  to  live,  but  soon  the  question  of  the 
boy's  education  presented  itself.  The  wandering 
father  was  in  no  position  to  help,  and  the  child  al 
ready  showed  signs  of  precocity ;  a  free  school,  bad 
as  such  things  then  were,  must  be  tried.  At  the 
age  of  six,  therefore,  his  grandmother,  with  many 
misgivings,  we  may  imagine,  entered  him  at  one  of 
these  so-called  schools,  and  for  two  years  the  exper 
iment  was  continued.  One  year  seems  to  have 
been  fairly  employed ;  but  that  the  common  school 
system,  as  it  then  existed  in  South  Carolina,  was 
wretched,  the  following  memoranda,  made  by  Mr. 
Simms  in  mature  life,  abundantly  prove :  — 

"With  the  exception  of  one  [of  the  schools]  I 
was  an  example  of  their  utter  worthlessness.  They 


EABLY  YEARS. 


taught   me  little  or  nothing.     The  teachers  were 
generally  worthless  in  morals,  and  as  ignorant  as 
worthless.     One  old  Irishman,  during  one  year, 
taught  me  to  spell,  read  tolerably,  and   write  a 
pretty  good  hand.     He  was  the  best,  and  he  knew 
little.    Not  one  of  them  could  teach  me  arithmetic. 
There  was  no  supervision  of  the  masters  or  com 
missioners  worth  a  doit.     The  teachers,  in  some 
cases,  never  came  to  the  school  for  three  days  in 
the  week.     We  boys  then  thought  these  the  best. 
When  they  did  come,  they  were  in  a  hurry  to  get 
away.     The  boys  did  nothing.     Never  attempted 
to  work  out  a  rule  in  arithmetic,  but  put  false 
proofs  which  were  never  discovered.     The  master 
had  a  key,  and  was  satisfied  with  the  figures  in  the 
proof.     He  knew  as  little  as  the  boys.     The  whole 
system,  when  I  was   a  boy,    was  worthless   and 
scoundrelly." 

These  emphatic  words  suggest  a  train  of  unpleas 
ant  reflections.  The  people  of  South  Carolina,  and 
of  the  South  in  general,  were  not  insensible  to  the 
advantages  of  a  good  educational  system.  How 
ever  inefficient  their  early  schools  and  colleges  were, 
the  idea  that  education  and  culture  were  desirable 
things  was  always  present  in  the  minds  of  thought 
ful  men.  But  it  is  to  be  feared  that  few  of  these 
thoughtful  men  saw  the  necessity  for  the  establish 
ment  of  a  system  of  schools  which  should  reach 
high  and  low  alike,  which  should  tend  to  establish 
a  thrifty  middle  class,  and  which,  finally,  should 
enlarge  the  sympathies  and  widen  the  views  of  the 


6  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

dominant  aristocracy.  The  free  or  common  schools 
were  tacitly,  or  expressly,  understood  to  be  the 
schools  of  the  poor,  and  schools  for  the  poor  alone 
will  always  be  poor  schools.  The  upper  classes 
had  private  tutors,  private  schools,  state  colleges, 
New  England  colleges,  and  finally  European  schools 
and  universities,  to  which  their  sons  could  be  sent; 
and  these  advantages  were  constantly  made  use  of. 
But  while  rich  young  Carolinians  were  astonishing 
sober-minded  New  England  students  with  their  lav 
ish  waste  of  money  and  time,  many  a  poor  lad  in 
the  proud  city  of  Charleston  was  being  doomed  to 
a  useless,  or  at  best  unsatisfying  and  chequered, 
career  for  want  of  decent  schooling  and  a  helping 
hand. 

Returning  now  to   our  half-Irish   boy  and   his 
wholly  Irish  teacher,  it  may  be  remarked  that  the 
latter' s  arithmetical  deficiencies  seem  to  have  been 
communicated  to  his  pupil  in  no  slight  degree ;  for 
in  the  very  memoranda  that  have  just  been  quoted, 
Mr.  Simms  estimates  the  period  of  his  school  life    ' 
at  four  years,  equally  divided  between  free  and 
private  schools,  and  then  in  almost  the  next  sen-    J 
tence  tells  us  that  his  "schooling  was  at  private    , 
schools  four  years  out  of  the  six  that "  he  "went  to 
school  at  all."    Figures  were  generally  small  things 
to  Southerners  of  the  old  regime,  and  perhaps  Mr. 
Simms's  arithmetical   vagaries  never  caused   him 
any  great  trouble.    Unfortunately,  they  have  given 
some  trouble  to  his  biographer. 


EARLY  YEARS. 


1 


But  the  reading  and  writing  lessons  were  em- 
phatically  successful.     The  boy  became  an  om 
nivorous  reader,  and  as  for  his  writings,  one  has 
only  to  transfer  the  epithet  to  Time,  which  has  de 
voured  them  all,— numerous  verses  though  they 
were.     From  the  age  of  eight,  when  he  employed 
his  precocious  talents  in  celebrating  the  victories 
gained  by  his  countrymen  in  their  second  war  with 
Great  Britain,  to  the  publication  of  his  first  little 
volume  in  1825,  his  pen  was  rarely  idle,  and  his 
brain  never.     When  he  could  not  write  poetry,  he 
read  it ;  and  in  all  probability,  Byron  and  Scott  and 
Moore  had  nowhere  a  more  devoted  admirer  than 
this  little  Charleston  boy.     There  is  no  way  of  de 
termining  what  his  own  stock  of  books  was ;  but  the 
Charleston  Library  was  open  to  him,  and  in  those 
days    of     direct    communication    with    England, 
Charleston  was  well  supplied  with  English  books. 
Although  trash  was  accessible  then  as  now,  his 
tastes  seem  to  have  led  him  along  right  lines  of 
reading.     "I  used  to  glow  and  shiver  in  turn,"  he 
said  once  to  Paul  Hayne,  "over  'The  Pilgrim's 
Progress; '  and  Moses's  adventures,  in 'The  Vicar 
of  Wakefield,'  threw  me  into  paroxysms  of  laugh 
ter."     Years   afterward  the  recollection    of    his 
youthful  delight  over  the  pages  of   Bunyan  fur 
nished  him  with  material  for  one  of  the  most  touch 
ing  scenes  in  the  whole  range  of  his  romances. 

In  the  mean  time  the  common  schools  had  been 
abandoned,  and  private  schools  tried  for  at  least 
two  years.  These  may  have  been  better  than  the 


8  WILLIAM  GILMO'EE  SIMMS. 

free  schools,  but  they  did  very  little  for  the  boy. 
He  learned  no  Latin,  and  late  in  life  was  heard  to 
say  that  he  had  never  read  through  an  English 
grammar.  Perhaps  his  sickly  childhood  may  ac 
count  in  part  for  his  slight  progress ;  but,  whatever 
the  cause,  it  is  evident  that  school  training  must 
count  as  a  very  small  factor  in  his  development. 

Formative  influences,  however,  were  not  lacking. 
The  grandmother  was  a  shrewd  woman,  with  a  stock 
of  stories  she  was  never  tired  of  telling,  or  the  boy 
of  hearing.  It  was  but  little  more  than  a  gener 
ation  since  Charleston  and  Carolina  had  experi 
enced  the  horrors  of  a  war  which  was  all  the  more 
terrible  because  it  was,  in  the  main,  a  civil  war. 
Mrs.  Gates  had  been  a  child  at  the  time,  but  she 
had  an  active  memory,  which  must  have  been  quick 
ened  by  reports  of  contemporary  victories  over  the 
ancient  enemy.  A  flood  of  recollections  was  doubt 
less  unlocked  when  her  grandson  rushed  in,  as  we 
may  imagine  he  did,  one  January  evening,  eager 
to  tell  all  he  had  heard  about  sailing-master  Bas 
set's  brave  defense  of  the  schooner  Alligator 
against  a  British  frigate.  Fighting  at  their  very 
door  must  have  called  up  the  often  told  story  of 
how  her  father  fought  "day  and  night  at  the  lines 
of  Charleston,  armed  with  the  rifle  which  past  ex 
perience  had  rendered  a  fatal  implement  in  his 
hands;"  of  how  he  had  sent  his  wife  and  child 
away  from  the  city;  of  the  wife's  anxiety,  and  her 
final  determination  to  share  her  husband's  peril; 
of  how,  "in  an  open  row-boat,  she  descends  Cooper 


EAELY  YEARS.  9 

Eiver  from  its  sources,  and,  with  muffled  oars, 
passes,  at  midnight,  through  the  midst  of  a  fear 
ful  cannonade,  through  the  thronging  barges  of  the 
British." 

Nor  was  Mrs.  Gates  confined  to  exciting  stories 
of  war  time.  Naturally  superstitious,  she  had  col 
lected  a  large  stock  of  weird  and  ghastly  tales, 
which  she  was  wont  to  repeat  to  her  imaginative 
grandson,  little  fancying  that  he  would  one  day  put 
them  to  very  good  use.  But  the  boy's  curiosity 
could  not  have  been  confined  to  the  deeds  of  his 
patriotic  ancestors,  or  to  the  supernatural  experi 
ences  of  the  heroes  of  his  grandmother's  tales.  He 
must  often  have  asked  and  dreamed  about  the  fa 
ther  whose  infrequent  letters  told  of  perils  and  pri 
vations  endured  in  warfare  with  the  murderous 
Creeks.  He  must  have  listened  eagerly  while  his 
grandmother  told  of  the  family  troubles  and  the 
suddenly  whitened  hair ;  but  just  where  that  father 
was  now,  and  when  he  would  come  to  see  his  little 
son,  were  questions  that  Mrs.  Gates  could  not  an 
swer,  and  they  were  the  most  important  questions 
of  all  to  a  boy  who  was  about  to  exchange  the  free 
dom  of  home  for  the  confining  precincts  of  a  drug 
gist's  shop. 

Exactly  when  Mrs.  Gates  decided  that  further 
schooling  was  impracticable  cannot  be  determined. 
Nor  are  the  reasons  known  which  prompted  her  to 
apprentice  her  grandson  to  a  druggist,  in  the  hope 
that  he  might  one  day  become  a  physician.  It  is 
not  even  known  what  master  he  served,  or  how 


10  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

long  the  apprenticeship  lasted.  But,  whatever  his 
condition,  his  love  of  reading  and  his  desire  for  self  - 
improvement  could  not  be  thwarted.  During  the 
day  he  had  little  opportunity  either  to  read  poetry 
or  to  write  it,  and  his  grandmother  did  not  approve 
of  late  hours  or  a  waste  of  candles.  But  the  end 
justified  the  means  with  the  young  student,  and  de 
ception  was  resorted  to.  He  brought  home  a  large 
box,  and  put  his  candle  inside.  His  head  and  book 
followed  the  candle,  and  such  rays  of  light  as 
passed  these  obstacles  were  dissipated  in  the  rear 
of  the  room.  Mrs.  Gates  would  see  no  light  shin 
ing  through  the  crevices  in  the  door,  and  could 
retire  in  peace. 

Books  seem  to  have  been  his  chief  companions 
during  these  early  years.  Protracted  periods  of 
illness,  and  the  consequent  restraint  exercised  by 
his  grandmother,  developed,  according  to  his  own 
confession,  a  constitutional  timidity,  which  must 
have  made  him  more  and  more  eager  to  take  refuge 
with  them.  This  timidity  was  bravely  shaken  off 
in  later  years;  nor  did  it  prevent  him  from  ex 
ploring,  in  his  boat,  the  beautiful  harbor  that  is 
still  Charleston's  pride.  But  he  never  learned  to 
swim,  and  his  chief  pleasure  was  to  lie  on  the  sands 
at  evening,  looking  out  upon  the  ocean,  listening  to 
its  mysterious  sounds,  and  longing  to  take  a  voyage 
that  would  carry  him  out  of  sight  of  land.  He  did 
not  wish,  he  says  in  a  manuscript  note,  to  visit  for 
eign  lands  and  see  strange  sights ;  he  wished  to  get 
rid  of  the  land  entirely,  to  be  alone  with  the  sea, 


EARLY  YEARS.  11 

to  commune  with  it  as  with  a  mysterious  being, 
that  had  affected  his  imagination  more  powerfully 
than  had  anything  else  in  nature.  This  sense  of 
the  weird  power  of  the  sea  must  have  been  enhanced 
by  the  peculiar  features  of  the  Charleston  land 
scape,  —  the  flat  stretch  of  country  unbroken  by 
hills,  the  swamps  over  which  the  tide  ebbed  and 
flowed,  the  venerable  trees  drooping  with  gray 
moss.  Long  into  manhood  this  undefinable  influ 
ence  of  the  sea  kept  its  hold  upon  his  imagination, 
and  to  it  may  be  traced  the  equally  undefinable 
conceptions  that  underlay  his  first  elaborate  poem, 
"Atalantis." 

About  this  period  an  event  occurred  which  de 
serves  a  passing  notice.  The  elder  Simms,  after 
going  through  many  adventures,  had  settled  down 
in  what  was  then  the  territory  of  Mississippi.  His 
prospects  had  brightened,  and  he  began  to  think 
of  the  son  whom  he  had  not  seen  for  eight  years. 
Some  friends,  who  were  about  to  make  a  journey 
to  Charleston,  were  commissioned  to  bring  the  boy 
back  with  them.  According  to  a  tradition  in  the 
family,  and  to  the  biographical  sketch  given  in 
"Appleton's  New  American  Cyclopaedia, "the  data 
for  which  evidently  came  from  Simms  himself, 
these  emissaries  caught  him  in  the  streets,  and,  on 
his  refusing  to  go  with  them,  would  have  applied 
force,  had  not  his  grandmother,  getting  wind  of  the 
affair,  brought  the  matter  into  court.  There  it  was 
determined  to  give  the  boy  his  choice,  whether  he 
would  go  or  stay.  He  decided  to  remain  with  his 


12  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

grandmother.  This  is  the  story,  and  thus  far  it 
has  been  impossible  to  throw  further  light  upon  it. 
The  case  was  not  reported,  at  least  old  members  of 
the  Charleston  bar  have  never  heard  of  it ;  and  if 
there  be  a  newspaper  account,  it  has  escaped  notice. 

The  effect  upon  the  elder  Simms  was  to  increase 
his  desire  to  see  his  son.  Accordingly,  in  1816  or 
1817,  he  came  to  Charleston  for  the  first  time  since 
his  self-enforced  banishment.  Recognizing  the 
attachment  existing  between  Mrs.  Gates  and  her 
grandson,  he  forebore  to  press  the  question  of  a  re 
moval  to  Mississippi ;  but  before  he  himself  went 
back,  he  lingered  long  enough  to  make  a  great  im 
pression  upon  his  namesake.  His  affection  cheered 
the  lonely  boy,  and  his  little  poems  and  impromptu 
epigrams  stimulated  a  poetic  faculty  already  in  use, 
and  possibly  produced  a  shy  confession  of  the  box 
and  candle  experiment,  and  an  exposure  of  the  verses 
written  under  so  great  difficulties.  But  his  father's 
tales  of  adventure  were  more  fascinating  than  his 
own  or  his  father's  poetry,  even  when  the  latter  was 
addressed  to  himself.  They  would  have  been  in 
teresting  told  at  second  hand,  but  told  by  the  hero 
himself,  in  his  impressive  Irish  manner,  they  carried 
the  boy  away,  and  had  a  profound  influence  upon 
his  future  career.  To  the  day  of  his  death  his 
chief  interest  and  his  chief  power  were  to  lie  in  de 
scriptions  of  hairbreadth  adventures,  of  rough  bor 
der-life,  and  of  cruel  Indian  or  partisan  warfare. 

The  elder  Simms  was  now  a  little  upwards  of 
fifty  years  old,  a  vigorous  man  over  six  feet  high, 


EARLY  TEARS.  13 

with  a  florid  complexion  and  snow-white  hair. 
According  to  his  son,  he  was  not,  strictly  speak 
ing,  an  educated  man,  but  he  was  a  great  reader 
and  a  keen  observer,  and  had  a  sense  for  humor, 
combined  with  a  melancholy  and  at  times  poetic 
temperament.  On  first  settling  in  Tennessee  he 
had  become  a  friend  and  admirer  of  that  idol  of  the 
sturdy  backwoodsmen,  Andrew  Jackson.  When 
volunteers  were  called  for  after  the  brutal  storming 
of  Fort  Mimms  (August  30,  1813)  by  the  half- 
breed  Weathersford  and  his  Creek  warriors,  he 
had  at  once  followed  his  hero  to  the  field,  enlisting 
in  General  John  Coffee's  brigade  of  Tennessee 
mounted  gun  men.  What  his  commission  was  is 
not  known.  He  was  probably  at  the  battles  of  Tal- 
lahatchie  and  Tohopeka,  and  was  certainly  at  New 
Orleans.  The  horrors  of  Florida  warfare  did  not 
daunt  him  any  more  than  the  questionableness  of 
his  authority  to  make  the  expedition  daunted  Jack 
son  ;  and  he  left  Mississippi  (for  this  was  in  1818, 
two  years  after  his  visit  to  Charleston)  to  follow  his 
old  chieftain.  Of  course,  such  a  round  of  experi 
ences  furnished  many  tales  of  daring  and  of  danger. 
The  man  who  had  killed  his  own  horse  for  food,  and 
lived  on  it  for  seven  days,  was  no  ordinary  hero  in 
the  eyes  of  his  son. 

But  this  pleasant  visit  soon  ended,  and  before 
long  the  father  was  out  in  Florida  with  Jackson, 
while  the  young  druggist's  apprentice  was  plying 
his  uncongenial  trade.  We  do  not  know  how  the 
years  passed,  but  it  is  certain  that  he  continued  to 


14  WILLIAM  GILNOEE  SIMMS. 

read  and  to  write  verses,  some  of  which  were  ad 
judged  good  enough  to  be  admitted  into  the  daily 
newspapers.  He  even  attempted  a  tragedy  upon 
the  time-honored  subject  of  Roderick,  the  last  of 
the  Goths,  but  it  was  not  until  later  that  he  mus 
tered  courage  enough  to  submit  it  to  a  manager. 

So  matters  went  on  until  he  was  eighteen,  when 
his  apprenticeship  probably  ceased.  The  irksome- 
ness  of  his  proposed  profession,  medicine,  was  ap 
parent,  and  he  resolved  to  study  law.  Perhaps  by 
this  time  his  own  and  his  grandmother's  circum 
stances  were  better,  and  possibly  his  father  could 
now  contribute  something  to  his  support.  He  en 
tered  the  law  office  of  Mr.  Charles  R.  Carroll,  a 
friend  not  greatly  older  than  himself,  and  there  he 
continued  for  a  while,  reading  Blackstone  and 
writing  Byronic  odes  whenever  important  person 
ages  like  Lafayette  honored  Charleston  with  a 
visit. 

But  about  this  time  (the  close  of  1824  or  the 
beginning  of  1825),  he  received  an  invitation  to 
visit  his  father  in  the  Southwest.  He  accordingly 
embarked  on  a  small  trading  vessel,  and  after  some 
trouble  with  a  mutinous  crew  reached  New  Or 
leans  in  safety.  A  long  and  perilous  journey  lay 
before  him,  and  he  may  have  wished  himself  back 
in  Charleston,  where  there  were  at  least  two  persons 
who  were  thinking  of  him,  —  his  grandmother  and 
a  certain  young  lady,  Miss  Anna  Malcolm  Giles 
by  name,  who  had  promised  to  be  his  wife.  But 
the  journey  had  to  be  made,  and  it  was  made,  part 


EAELY  YEAES.  15 

probably  by  boat  and  the  rest  on  horseback.  He 
found  his  father  at  his  plantation  near  Georgeville, 
Mississippi,  just  at  the  time  when  the  active  old 
man  had  returned  from  a  trip  of  three  hundred 
miles  into  the  heart  of  the  Indian  country. 

Simms  must  have  remained  several  months;  for 
so  long  a  journey  demanded  a  proportionate  visit 
in  those  days  of  slow  traveling.  He  rode  with  his 
father  from  one  small  settlement  to  another,  accept 
ing  the  lavish  hospitality  offered  by  the  backwoods 
men  and  narrowly  observing  their  manners.  He 
visited  both  the  Creek  and  Cherokee  "Nations," 
and  wrote  poems  on  Indian  subjects  during  his  vis 
its.  Twenty  years  later,  when  addressing  the  stu 
dents  of  the  University  of  Alabama  at  Tuscaloosa, 
he  told  them  that  he  had  once  ridden  over  that 
very  spot  when  the  silence  of  the  primeval  forest 
was  only  broken  by  the  fall  of  his  horse's  feet  and 
the  howl  of  the  distant  wolf.  On  one  occasion  he 
stopped  at  noon  to  rest,  and  when  he  awoke  his 
father  showed  him  that  his  head  had  been  pillowed 
on  a  lonely  grave.  A  rudely  carved  cross  sug 
gested  to  the  imaginative  boy  that  this  must  be  the 
grave  of  one  of  De  Soto's  followers,  a  notion  which 
his  father  combated,  but  which  nevertheless  fur 
nished  material  for  a  poem. 

The  influence  of  these  journeys  upon  young 
Simms  cannot  be  overestimated.  They  familiar 
ized  him  with  the  life  of  a  peculiar  people,  and  en 
abled  him  in  after  years  to  describe  that  life  as  no 
other  writer  has  done,  or  in  all  probability  will 


16  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

do.  The  broken-down  aristocrat  from  the  older 
States,  planting  his  first  crop  of  cotton  with  the  aid 
of  lazy  slaves  and  still  lazier  Indians;  the  hardy 
North  Carolina  mountaineer,  building  a  cabin  simi 
lar  to  the  one  left  behind,  and  still  supporting  him 
self  and  family  on  what  his  rifle  could  bring  down ; 
the  half-breed,  as  slimy  as  the  swamp  in  which  he 
took  up  his  abode;  the  flashy  gambler  compelled 
to  fly  from  Mobile  or  New  Orleans,  and  amusing 
himself  while  in  hiding  by  practicing  on  the  simple- 
shrewd  inhabitants  of  a  cross-roads  settlement ;  the 
rascally  pettifogger ;  the  pompous  and  absurd  jus 
tice  of  the  peace ;  the  Yankee  peddler ;  the  Metho 
dist  circuit  rider;  and,  finally,  the  hearty,  sensible 
woodsman,  now  fighting  like  a  tiger,  and  now  as 
gentle  as  a  lamb,  —  all  these  he  rode  with,  ate  with, 
and  slept  with,  and  they  live  yet  in  his  pages. 
We  can  only  regret  that  he  never  finished  certain 
"Sketches  of  Personal  Adventure,"  a  few  frag 
ments  of  which  still  exist  in  manuscript. 

Only  one  incident  of  this  visit  has  been  recorded 
in  detail  by  Simms  himself.  On  one  of  their  long 
rides  his  father  began  to  urge  him  to  take  up  his 
abode  in  the  new  and  fruitful  country  they  were 
then  traversing.  Simms  declared  his  purpose  of 
returning  to  Carolina,  marrying  his  sweetheart  and 
beginning  the  practice  of  law.  Whereupon  his 
father  exclaimed :  — 

"  Return  to  Charleston !  Why  should  you  re 
turn  to  Charleston,  where  you  can  never  succeed 
in  any  profession,  where  you  need  what  you  have 


EARLY  YEAES.  17 

not, —friends,  family,  and  fortune;  and  without 
these  your  whole  life,  unless  some  happy  accident 
should  favor  you,  will  be  a  mere  apprenticeship, 
a  hopeless  drudging  after  bread.  Ho  1  do  not 
think  of  it.  Stay  here.  Study  your  profession 
here,  and  pursue  it  with  the  energy  and  talent 
which  you  possess,  and  I  will  guarantee  you  a 
future,  and  in  ten  years  a  seat  in  Congress.  Do 
not  think  of  Charleston.  Whatever  your  talents, 
they  will  there  be  poured  out  like  water  on  the 
sands.  Charleston!  I  know  it  only  as  a  place  of 

tombs."1 

The  son  listened  to  this  appeal  with  respect,  but 
it  did  not  move  him.     He  had  resolved  to  cast  in 
his  lot  with  his  native  State,  and  neither  this  nor 
any  subsequent  proposal  could  change  his  determi 
nation.     Thirty  years  later  he  regretted  that  he 
had  not  remained  with  his  father,  for  reasons  which 
will  become  apparent  as  this  narrative  proceeds. 
Every  prediction  that  the  older  man  made  came 
true;  and  if  the  younger  had  yielded,  the  success 
that  was  foreshadowed  would,  in  all  probability, 
have    been    attained.     But   it    may  be    doubted 
whether  a  lucrative  practice  or  a  seat  in  Congress 
would  ever  have  satisfied  a  man  who  had  it  in  him 
to  make  the  heroic  fight  to  lead  the  higher  life  that 
Simms   afterwards   made.     Waiving   all  question 
of  the  amount  or  the  permanence  of  his  literary 
fame,  it  may  still  be  believed  that  he  acted  wisely 
in  rejecting  his  father's  proposals.    The  life  of  the 
i  From  Simms' s  memoranda. 


18  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

writer  and  scholar  is  a  noble  life,  and  the  man  who 
feels  in  himself  the  desire  and  the  power  to  lead  it 
is  right  in  disregarding  all  worldly  allurements  and 
distractions,  although  in  the  end  it  be  proved  that 
he  has  merely  lived  his  life,  without  leaving  be 
hind  a  single  line  that  posterity  will  care  to  pre 
serve.  It  was  with  some  perception  of  this  truth, 
although  his  ostensible  purpose  was  to  practice  law, 
that  young  Simms  took  his  lonely  journey  back  to 
the  seaboard  and  to  civilization. 


CHAPTER  H. 

SEEKING   A   VOCATION. 

THERE  were  doubtless  other  visions  than  those  of 
literary  fame  that  hovered  before  the  eyes  of  our 
young  traveler  as  he  approached  the  city  of  his 
birth  after  so  long  an  absence.  The  midsummer  of 
1825  was  close  at  hand,  and,  whether  he  made  his 
journey  by  land  or  sea,  he  must  have  been  glad  to 
think  of  the  rest  and  healthful  security  promised 
by  the  breeze-swept  city.  Then,  too,  the  regrets 
occasioned  by  the  parting  with  his  father  must  have 
been  swallowed  up  by  the  delight  he  took  in  pictur 
ing  the  welcome  he  would  receive  from  his  sweet 
heart  and  from  his  old  grandmother. 

But  these  could  not  have  been  the  only  attrac 
tions  that  Charleston  exercised  upon  him.  It 
promised  him  a  better  chance  to  lead  a  literary 
life  than  the  rough  border  country  he  had  just 
quitted;  it  promised  him  sight  and  touch  of  the 
two  women  he  loved ;  but  more  than  all,  it  drew 
him  on  by  the  peculiar  fascination  which  alone, 
perhaps,  of  Southern  cities  it  possesses  for  sons  and 
strangers  alike.  He  knew  that  he  was  a  poor  and 
friendless  boy,  that  the  men  and  women  who  made 
Charleston  what  it  really  was  did  not  know  him 


20  WILLIAM  GILNOEE  SIMMS. 

and  did  not  want  to  know  him;  he  knew  that  he 
and  his  class  were  not  so  much  looked  upon  with 
disfavor  as  not  looked  upon  at  all;  he  knew  that 
what  his  father  had  said  of  Charlestonian  pride  and 
narrowness  was  every  word  true ;  and  yet  he  was 
proud  of  being  a  Charlestonian.  They  all  are; 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  born  within  its  lim 
its  is  proud  of  the  city,  and  would  hardly  ex 
change  a  life  of  poverty  in  its  narrow  streets  for 
any  assurance  of  wealth  or  consideration  abroad. 
"See  Charleston,  and  live  to  envy  her  people" 
is  the  way  they  have  improved  upon  the  Italian 
proverb. 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  Simms  and  the 
more  intellectual  men  of  his  class,  together  with 
a  few  far-sighted  members  of  the  aristocracy,  had 
not  perceived,  more  or  less  clearly,  that  there  was 
much  to  be  reprehended  and  feared  for  in  the  so 
cial  structure  of  the  city  they  nevertheless  loved. 
They  doubtless  rebelled  often  enough  in  their 
secret  hearts  against  the  domination  of  a  blind, 
exclusive,  and  thoughtless  aristocracy.  The  drug 
gist's  apprentice,  whose  soul  had  been  fired  by  the 
strains  of  Byron  inciting  the  Greeks  to  throw  off 
their  chains,  could  not  but  have  felt  an  irresistible 
desire  to  burst  the  social  chains  that  fettered  him 
self ;  could  not  but  have  formed  a  determination 
one  day  to  push  his  way,  by  the  force  of  his  talents 
and  the  greatness  of  his  achievements,  into  the  in 
nermost  circles  of  his  formal  and  exclusive  city. 
But  just  as  the  barbarian  Goth  was  overawed  by 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  21 

the  majesty  and  mystery  of  the  Eternal  City,  be 
fore  which  he  lay  encamped,  so  the  cold  stateliness 
and  silent  pride  of  the  Carolinian  metropolis  cast  a 
spell  upon  the  rash  spirits  that  yearned  for  change. 
Into  the  nature  of  this  spell  and  its  workings  we 
must  now  briefly  inquire,  ^n  other  words,  we  must 
consider  Simms's  environment  before  we  attempt 
to  follow  his  career  as  a  man  and  a  writer. 
Without  a  knowledge  of  this  environment  we 
should  be  constantly  tempted  to  be  unjust  to  him ; 
in  fact,  we  should  hardly  understand  him  at  all. 
But  as  it  is  obvious  that  this  environment  includes 
not  only  Charleston  and  Carolina,  but  the  whole 
South,  for  all  Southern  men  were  subjected  to  very 
much  the  same  influences,  it  is  equally  obvious  that 
we  have  entered  upon  a  formidable  task,  —  one  for 
which  a  whole  volume  would  hardly  be  adequate, 
much  less  a  few  pages. 

The  population  of  Charleston  was  estimated  by 
a  census  of  1824  at  slightly  under  twenty-eight 
thousand.  Over  half  of  these  were  slaves  and 
free  persons  of  color;  and  if  the  importance  of 
the  city  had  depended  upon  its  white  inhabitants 
merely,  that  importance  would  have  been  slight. 
Even  its  commerce  would  hardly  have  entitled  it  to 
any  great  respect;  for  its  shipping,  though  still 
considerable,  no  longer  sufficed  to  give  the  town 
the  distinction  it  had  enjoyed  as  a  prosperous  port 
in  the  days  before  the  Revolution.  Baltimore  had 
already  passed  it  in  the  race  for  population  and 
wealth;  and  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  a  city 


22  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

had  sprung  up  which  in  size,  wealth,  and  even  in 
picturesque  interest  threatened  to  eclipse  its  fame. 

But  if  the  city  had  sunk  in  the  scale  of  impor 
tance,  so  had  the  State,  and  so  had  the  proud 
mother  of  States,  Virginia.  Not  long  since,  South 
ern  statesmen  had  dreamed  that  wealth  and  popu 
lation  would  steadily  flow  south  and  keep  that  sec 
tion  ever  in  the  van  of  progress  and  political  power. 
Now  the  calm  observer  could  see  that  so  far  from 
this  being  the  case,  the  South  had  really  lost 
ground,  and  was  losing  it  every  day.  Nor  would 
he  have  failed  to  reflect  with  sorrow  that  this 
lost  ground  could  never  be  recovered  by  the  bold 
schemes  of  politicians,  or  by  the  ostrich  policy  of 
blinding  the  eyes  to  the  true  state  of  the  case.  But 
calm  observers  are  rare  everywhere,  and  they  are 
especially  rare  in  a  conservative  aristocracy.  And 
yet  it  did  not  take  much  observation  to  see  that  in 
wealth  and  enterprise,  and  all  that  goes  to  make  up 
a  material  civilization,  the  Northern  States,  with 
their  system  of  free  labor,  had  left  the  slaveholding 
States  far  behind ;  nor  did  it  require  much  histor 
ical  knowledge  to  infer  that  before  long  the  centres 
of  wealth  and  enterprise  would  become  the  centres 
of  political  power  and  the  centres  of  culture  as  well. 

But  although  the  Southern  States  were  thus 
steadily  receding  from  the  position  they  occupied 
when  Washington  and  Jefferson  and  Henry  and 
Marion  and  Rutledge  were  their  representative 
men,  and  although  for  the  next  forty  years  the 
chief  interest  attaching  to  their  history  is  th,e 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  23 

mournful  interest  arising  from  a  contemplation  of 
the  evils  that  flowed  from  an  unsound  social  and 
political  system,  nevertheless  there  will  be  found, 
in  their  literary,  social,  and  economic  history  dur 
ing  this  period,  much  that  possesses  a  picturesque 
charm,  much  that  appeals  to  the  deepest  sympathies 
of  our  nature,  and  finally,  much  that  illustrates  the 
working  of  the  great  forces  that  underlie  and  con 
trol  the  development  of  a  people. 

Now  what  is  true  in  this  regard  of  the  Southern 
States  in  general  is  preeminently  true  of  the  city  of 
Charleston.  What  Boston  has  been  to  New  Eng 
land  that  has  Charleston  been  to  South  Carolina, 
one  may  almost  say,  to  the  Southern  States.  In 
deed,  it  would  be  nearer  the  mark,  if  one  may  com 
pare  small  things  with  great,  to  say  that  Charleston 
is  to  South  Carolina  as  London  is  to  England. 
Just  as  English  country  gentlemen  have  for  gener 
ations  gone  up  to  London  for  the  season,  so  have 
the  Carolina  planters  made  their  annual  migration 
to  Charleston.  Those  who  do  so  no  longer  have 
only  changed  their  habit  with  their  change  of 
fortune.  And  just  as  London  has  been  the  lit 
erary,  social,  and  political  centre  of  England, 
so  has  Charleston,  since  its  founding,  been  the 
literary,  social,  and  political  centre  of  South  Caro 
lina.1 

Nay,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  to  most  ante-bellum 

1  These  and  the  following  remarks  are  more  true  of  the  "  low 
country  "  than  of  the  "  up  country,"  but  they  are  not  entirely  in 
applicable  to  the  latter. 


24  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

Carolinians,  Charleston  was  the  centre  of  the  uni 
verse.  They  swore  by  St.  Michael's  Church,  b} 
the  statue  of  Pitt,  by  the  Orphan  House,  and  by 
the  old  Broad  Street  Theatre.  They  were  proud 
of  their  Library,  of  their  Battery,  of  their  beautiful 
harbor.  If  a  stranger  remarked  on  the  narrow 
ness  of  many  of  their  streets,  they  dilated  on  their 
good  system  of  drainage,  on  their  salubrious  sea 
breezes,  and  on  the  fact  that  many  invalids  from 
the  West  India  Islands  came  to  Charleston  to  spend 
the  summer  months.  If  it  was  hinted  that  the  so- 
called  College,  recently  founded  in  a  part  of  the  old 
barracks,  was  in  reality  a  mere  academy,  they  gen 
erally  contrived  to  shift  the  subject  to  their  two 
banks,  their  sixteen  churches,  their  Literary  and 
Philosophical  Society,  and  their  three  daily  news 
papers.  If  the  lack  of  a  good  market  was  noted, 
it  was  courteously  explained  that  nearly  every 
Charleston  gentleman  owned  -  a  plantation  from 
which  he  was  in  the  habit  of  getting  frequent  sup 
plies.  Should  the  philanthropic  stranger  have 
pointed  out  that  this  bore  hardly  on  the  poorer 
classes,  whose  interests,  indeed,  seemed  in  few  re 
spects  to  have  been  considered,  his  remarks  would 
have  elicited  some  well-bred  commonplace  or  an 
equally  well-bred  silence.  But  should  he  have 
gone  on  to  point  out  that  the  frequency  of  incen 
diary  fires  indicated  a  smouldering  discontent 
among  the  slaves,  which  the  strictness  of  the  pa 
trol  kept  up  must  necessarily  increase,  the  silence 
would  have  become  ominous,  unless,  indeed,  some 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  25 

sharp  retort  gave  him  to  understand  that  he  was 
treading  on  dangerous  ground. 

But  although  the  Charlestonian  had  many  ob 
jects  of  civic  pride  to  point  out  to  visitors  ,•  although 
he  could  dilate  on  the  sombre  beauty  of  the  land 
scape,  and  grow  enthusiastic  over  many  a  live  oak 
almost  as  stately  and  venerable  as  his  own  family 
tree;  although  Sullivan's  Island  lay  across  the  blue 
waves  of  the  harbor  ever  ready  to  remind  him  of 
Moultrie  and  the  glorious  days  of  '76;  neverthe 
less  it  was  the  men  Charleston  had  produced  and 
was  producing  that  furnished  the  most  grateful  ma 
terial  for  his  song  of  praise.  And  it  was  these  men 
whom  youths  like  Simms  wondered  at  and  envied, 
and  into  whose  society  they  longed  to  be  admitted. 

Very  stately  gentlemen  they  were,  those  distin 
guished  Charlestonians.  Courtesy  sat  upon  them 
like  a  well-fitting  garment,  albeit  they  preserved  an 
air  of  coldness  and  reserve,  reminding  one  of  their 
unsociable  houses  which  rose  behind  walls  shutting 
in  beautiful  gardens,  which  it  would  have  been  a 
sacrilege  for  the  public  to  enjoy.  Among  their 
number  there  were  not  a  few  who  would  have  been 
distinguished  for  their  classical  attainments  even  in 
a  European  capital,  — men  who,  in  the  words  of 
one  of  their  descendants,1  "  looked  upon  literature 
as  the  choice  recreation  of  gentlemen,  as  something 
fair  and  good,  to  be  courted  in  a  dainty,  amateur 
fashion,  and  illustrated  by  apropos  quotations  from 
Lucretius,  Virgil,  or  Horace." 
1  Paul  Hayne. 


26  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

Others  there  were  who,  though  equally  stately, 
cared  less  for  the  classics  than  for  the  pedigree  of 
the  horses  that  were  to  run  next  February  over  the 
Washington  course.  Political  races  are  not  al 
luded  to  here,  but  the  all-exciting  Charleston  races, 
the  event  of  the  year,  to  which  everybody  went,  — 
clergymen  and  lawyers;  judges,  who  would  have 
been  trying  cases  had  the  court-house  doors  dared 
to  stand  open ;  rural  members  of  the  Episcopal  Con 
vention,  which  met  in  Race  Week  that  it  might  be 
sure  of  a  quorum,  —  the  carnival  of  the  year,  at 
tended  by  gentlemen  in  buckskin  breeches  and  top 
boots,  and  by  ladies  attired  in  every  fashion,  riding 
in  coaches  of  every  style.  Perhaps  these  gentlemen 
of  the  South  Carolina  Jockey  Club,  who  sat  down 
to  a  stately  dinner  on  the  Wednesday  of  Race 
Week,  and  danced  a  stately  measure  at  their  ball 
on  the  Friday  of  the  same,  were  more  admired  and 
envied  by  young  outsiders  than  the  distinguished 
classicists  mentioned  above. 

But  the  mention  of  the  Charleston  races  brings 
up  the  memory  of  the  poet  who  celebrated  them, 
William  Crafts,  for  many  years  literary  dictator  of 
Charleston,  whose  "Raciad"  is  now  wellnigh  for 
gotten,  but  who  will  deserve  further  notice  in 
another  place.  And  the  mention  of  Crafts  recalls 
the  name  of  Charleston's  next  literary  light,  the 
learned  and  just-not-great  Legare,  who  criticised 
his  predecessor  in  no  gentle  manner  in  the  pages  of 
the  "  Southern  Review."  With  Legare  comes  the 
ablest  lawyer  of  his  State,  James  Louis  Petigru, 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  27 

now,  in  1825,  a  young  man  of  high  promise  and 
some  little  performance.  Others  of  greater  age 
and  achievements  also  pass  before  us.  First, 
Stephen  Elliott,  senior,  perhaps  the  most  public- 
spirited  citizen  of  his  day,  first  president  of  the 
State  Bank,  founder  of  the  Literary  and  Philo 
sophical  Society,  first  professor  of  natural  history 
and  botany  in  the  Medical  College  he  helped  to 
establish  at  Charleston,  author  of  a  "Botany  of 
South  Carolina  and  Georgia,"  advocate  of  free 
schools,  and  founder  and  contributor  to  the  famous, 
if  short-lived,  "Southern  Review."  By  his  side 
stands  the  Eight  Reverend  John  England,  Roman 
Catholic  Bishop  of  Charleston,  beloved  by  Protes 
tants  and  Catholics  alike,  founder  of  seminaries 
and  papers,  courageous  opponent  of  dueling,  pro 
moter  of  classical  learning,  and  a  perfect  hero  in 
times  of  pestilence  and  public  distress.  Beside 
these  names  others  shine  out  with  a  milder  lustre : 
Joel  R.  Poinsett,  Thomas  Smith  Grimke,  a  heretic 
in  the  matter  of  the  classics,  Charles  Eraser,  the 
friend  of  Allston,  who  has  already  left  the  bar 
that  he  may  paint  miniatures  in  peace,  and  the 
Rev.  John  Bachman,  soon  to  obtain  distinction  as 
a  naturalist  and  a  fellow-laborer  with  Audubon. 
A  more  conspicuous  figure  than  any  of  these  is 
Robert  Young  Hayne,  Webster's  future  opponent, 
and  last  but  not  least,  connecting  the  present  with 
the  past,  is  Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney,  patriot 
and  statesman,  now  within  a  few  weeks  of  his  death. 
Certainly  such  a  place  and  such  men  must  have 


28  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

exercised  a  fascination  upon  an  imaginative  youth 
like  Simms.  There  was,  and  is,  something  unique 
about  the  town,  an  old-world  look,  an  air  of  con 
scious  individuality  such  as  aged  men  wear  who 
have  been  through  stirring  scenes.  Here  was  no 
thing  new,  no  mushroom  growth.  Along  these 
narrow  streets  men  like  Marion  and  Rutledge  and 
Sumter  and  Gadsden  had  walked,  and  along  them 
their  descendants  were  walking  in  that  year  of  our 
Lord,  eighteen  hundred  and  twenty-five.  Turn 
where  you  would,  you  were  reminded  of  the  past, 
not  of  the  Revolution  merely,  but  of  the  stately 
colonial  days  anterior.  Had  not  the  Reverend 
Commissary  Alexander  Garden  preached  in  St. 
Philip's  Church  for  thirty-four  years,  and  had  he 
not  cited  the  famous  George  Whitefield  before  the 
ecclesiastical  court  of  the  same  parish?  Did  not 
the  sheriff  still  escort  the  judges  to  open  court,  and 
were  not  gowns  and  official  robes  still  a  thing  of 
the  present?  Surely,  he  would  have  been  a  rash  in 
novator  who  thought  to  change  such  a  people  in  a 
day.  It  was  far  more  likely  that  he  would  become 
proud  and  sedate  like  the  rest  than  that  he  would 
succeed  in  disturbing  their  self-satisfied  quiescence. 
But,  some  one  will  ask,  was  not  this  very  sedate 
city  thrown  into  a  tumult  of  confusion  only  six 
years  later?  Did  not  hostile  political  factions 
nearly  come  to  blows  in  that  most  respectable  of 
localities,  King  Street,  near  Hasel  ?  Is  not  a 
trifle  always  sufficient  to  set  these  people  by  the 
ears?  How  is  it,  then,  that  they  are  represented 


SEEKING  A   VOCATION.  29 

as  cold,  conservative,  and  slow  to  move?  These 
questions  must  be  answered,  and  in  answering  them 
we  shall  be  compelled  to  leave  Charleston  for  a 
while  and  to  extend  our  field  of  view  in  the  manner 
indicated  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter. 

South  Carolina  is  often  called  the  "Hotspur 
State,"  and  the  impression  has  gone  abroad  that 
every  South  Carolinian  is  an  arrogant,  hectoring 
personage,  ready  to  overwhelm  you  with  his  cour 
tesy  and  hospitality  at  one  moment,  and  at  the  next 
to  put  a  bullet  into  you  from  the  distance  of  ten 
paces.  Even  his  Southern  neighbors  look  upon 
him  with  some  awe,  and  consider  his  courtesy  a 
little  stiff,  his  hospitality  a  little  ceremonious,  and 
his  courage  a  little  too  demonstrative  and  unreflect 
ing.  This  popular  impression  is  not  the  result  of 
mere  prejudice  or  ignorance,  but  is  based  upon  in 
ferences  from  many  undeniable  facts.  At  the 
same  time  no  one  can  sojourn  long  in  South  Car 
olina,  or  be  much  thrown  with  natives  of  the  State, 
without  perceiving  that  this  popular  impression  is 
very  far  from  being  a  just  estimate  of  South  Car 
olinian  character.  The  very  appellation  "Hotspur 
State  "  is  a  loose  one,  for  who  can  imagine  a  com 
placent  Hotspur  perfectly  well  satisfied  with  him 
self  and  his  circumstances  provided  only  he  be  let 
alone  ?  Yet  this  complacency,  this  lack  of  ambi 
tion,  is  a  chief  characteristic  of  the  little  State  and 
its  people.  It  cannot,  of  course,  be  denied  that 
Carolina  politicians  have  been  dominated  at  times 
by  ambitious  motives ;  but  the  desire  to  be  let  alone, 


30  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

to  be  by  themselves,  to  be  the  same  to-day,  to-mor 
row,  and  a  century  hence,  that  their  fathers  were  a 
century  ago,  was  more  potent  in  stirring  up  the 
mass  of  the  people  to  the  precipitant  rashness  of 
nullification  and  secession  than  all  the  allurements 
and  incitements  of  the  Goddess  of  Ambition  could 
ever  have  been,  even  though  Calhoun  himself,  im 
itating  Peisistratos,  had  driven  with  her  into  the 
market  place  of  Charleston. 

Of  course  the  character  of  no  people  is  free  from 
inconsistencies,  certainly  of  no  interesting  people ; 
but  it  would  seem  that  the  inhabitants  of  South 
Carolina  are  preeminently  conspicuous  in  this  re 
gard.  They  have  always  been  ultra-democratic 
aristocrats.  With  conservative  tendencies  so  ex 
treme  as  frequently  to  hamper  development,  they 
have  entered  upon  revolutions  with  a  facility  unpar 
alleled  outside  of  France.  While  countenancing  a 
code  of  honor  that  might  bring  misery  upon  any 
family  at  any  moment,  they  have  constantly  refused 
to  imperil  the  family  with  a  law  permitting  ab 
solute  divorce.  While  professing  to  hold  culture 
and  literary  attainments  in  high  repute,  they  have 
consistently  snubbed  or  disregarded  all  efforts  that 
looked  toward  the  creation  of  a  home  literature. 
While  chivalrously  careful  of  the  sensibilities  of 
their  equals,  they  have  ignored,  as  a  rule,  the  ex 
istence  of  such  sensibilities  in  their  inferiors.  Can 
these  inconsistencies,  which  are  more  or  less  seen 
in  the  people  of  the  other  Southern  States,  be  sat 
isfactorily  explained,  or  are  they  inconsistencies  at 
all? 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  31 

If  there  be  one  fact  that  stands  out  before  the 
student  of  ante-bellum  Southern  history,  it  is  that 
the  Southern  people,  down  to  1861,  were  living  a 
primitive  life,  a  life  full  of  survivals.  This  fact 
has  been  often  brought  out,  by  no  one  so  clearly, 
perhaps,  as  by  Professor  Shaler,  of  Harvard,  in 
his  admirable  article  on  "The  Peculiarities  of  the 
South."1  Approximate  explanations  of  the  fact 
have  also  been  attempted,  and  these  explanations 
resolve  themselves  sooner  or  later  into  two  words, 
feudalism  and  slavery.  The  Southern  people  were 
descendants,  in  the  main,  of  that  "portion  of  the 
English  people  who,"  to  quote  Professor  Shaler, 
"had  been  least  modernized,  who  still  retained  a 
large  element  of  the  feudal  notion."  Feudal  no 
tions  were  by  no  means  dead  in  the  England  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  transplantation  to  a  new 
world  gave  them  a  more  vigorous  growth  from  the 
moment  that  the  first  slave-ship  made  its  appearance 
in  Virginia  waters.  Feudal-minded  cavaliers  were 
the  people  of  all  others  to  whom  overlordship  would 
be  natural  and  grateful.  What  wonder,  then,  that 
slavery  struck  its  roots  deep,  or  that  the  tree  over 
which  it  spread  its  poisonous  tendrils  should  soon 
show  signs  of  decay?  Slavery  helped  feudalism 
and  feudalism  helped  slavery,  and  the  Southern 
people  were  largely  the  outcome  of  the  interaction 
of  these  two  formative  principles.  A  few  para 
graphs  will,  perhaps,  suffice  to  show  the  truth  of 
this  statement,  as  well  as  to  cast  some  light  upon 
1  In  the  North  American  Review  for  October,  1890. 


32  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

the  alleged  inconsistencies  of  the  Southern  charac 
ter. 

Among  ante-bellum  Southerners  the  plantation 
played  a  part  similar  to  that  played  of  old  by  the 
English  manor.  The  planters  were  the  sole  repos 
itories  of  social  dignity  and  of  judicial  and  political 
power  in  their  respective  neighborhoods.  They  re 
produced  as  far  as  was  possible  the  life  of  the  Eng 
lish  country  gentleman,  and  those  fortunate  indi 
viduals  who,  besides  several  plantations,  possessed 
well  invested  funds  were  accorded  a  position  not  un 
like  that  of  an  English  nobleman.  In  manners  and 
customs,  in  education  and  religion,  they  resembled 
that  survival  of  feudalism,  the  English  squire,  and 
they  prided  themselves  upon  the  resemblance. 
They  were  even  more  tenacious  of  good  old  cus 
toms  than  their  prototypes :  witness  the  gentlemanly 
necessity  for  falling  dead  drunk  under  one's  host's 
table,  a  custom  which,  although  it  finally  died, 
seems  to  have  held  sway  in  the  South  after  it  had 
died  in  England.  Like  the  English  squire  they 
were  loyal  to  church  and  creed,  to  party  chiefs 
and  principles,  and  this  loyalty  is  a  delightful  sur 
vival  from  the  times  described  in  the  "Germania" 
of  Tacitus. 

But  the  conservative  and  loyal  Southerner  was 
feudal  minded  in  other  ways.  He  believed  in  social 
distinctions  and  in  the  respect  due  to  himself  from 
his  inferiors.  He  acknowledged  no  superiors,  but 
as  every  gentleman  had  to  defend  his  honor  as 
zealously  as  any  knight  of  old,  he  saw  the  necessity 


SEEKING  A   VOCATION.  33 

of  observing  a  punctilious  courtesy.  He  must  also 
be  deferential  to  women,  and  guard  the  honor  and 
welfare  of  those  of  his  own  family.  Being  wo 
man's  guardian  and  worshiper,  he  demanded  of  her 
charms,  graces,  and  accomplishments,  especially 
those  of  the  housekeeping  order.  But  where  was 
the  use  of  a  high  education  for  women,  when  any 
Southern  gentleman  would  welcome  to  his  house  his 
old  maid  fifth  cousin,  provided  she  were  dependent  ? 
He  would  even  welcome  ne'er-do-wells  of  the  male 
sex,  for  living  was  cheap,  and  the  presence  of  such 
hangers-on  was  a  sign  of  his  own  importance  as  the 
head  of  his  house ;  besides,  they  were  agreeable  fel 
lows  as  a  rule,  who  paid  for  their  support  much  as 
a  court  jester  did  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

But  his  hospitality  was  not  limited  to  the  poor 
relation,  or,  indeed,  limited  at  all.  It,  too,  was  a 
relic  of  feudalism.  It  was  lavish  and  hearty,  and 
not  devoid  of  elegance,  but  in  many  respects  it 
would  have  suited  the  tastes  of  a  Norman  nobleman 
better  than  those  of  a  modern  epicure.  Abundance 
was  deemed  a  prime  requisite  of  every  entertain 
ment,  and  one  of  the  chief  differences  between  the 
Southern  baron  and  his  prototype  of  the  twelfth 
century  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  former  plundered 
his  own  family  by  his  wasteful  hospitality,  while 
the  latter  plundered  his  neighbors  by  more  open 
and  violent  methods.  When  whole  families  of 
relations  would  migrate  from  Florida  to  Virginia, 
summer  after  summer,  in  gigs,  in  carriages,  and 
on  horseback,  with  baggage  wagons  and  numerous 


34  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

slaves  in  attendance ;  when  they  would  stay  month 
after  month,  living  upon  the  fat  of  the  land,  the 
gods  of  hospitality  were  doubtless  delighted,  but 
the  gods  of  thrift  and  household  peace  hid  their 
faces  and  groaned.  And  how  like  a  royal  prog 
ress  or  a  visit  from  one  nobleman  to  another  it 
all  was ! 

But  a  Norman  noble  would  have  found  more  to 
remind  him  of  feudal  days  than  the  loaded-down 
table  of  his  host,  had  one  revisited  "the  glimpses 
of  the  moon  "  and  become  the  guest  of  a  Southern 
planter.  His  dignity  would  not  have  stood  out  long 
against  the  hail-fellow-well-met  manners  of  those 
around  him.  Late  hours  might  have  told  upon 
him  at  first,  but  the  sound  of  the  horn  would  have 
found  him  ready  for  the  chase,  whether  of  deer  or 
fox,  even  though  the  old  muzzle-loader  put  into  his 
hand  were  a  cause  of  considerable  bewilderment. 
He  would  have  thought  that  the  horses  were  capar 
isoned  rather  plainly,  but  he  would  have  appreci 
ated  the  horsemanship  of  the  planter  and  his  sons 
as  they  vaulted  into  their  saddles.  The  negroes, 
who  held  the  hounds  and  guns,  or  who  hovered  in 
the  neighborhood  watching  the  preparations,  might 
have  created  some  surprise,  with  their  black  faces, 
but  would  instantly  have  been  classed  with  his  own 
retainers  at  home.  And  finally,  when,  after  a  long 
day's  sport,  they  stretched  a  twelve-point  buck  be 
fore  the  door  of  the  mansion,  and  the  lady  of  the 
house,  with  her  guests  and  daughters,  came  out  to 
welcome  the  hunters  and  to  admire  and  pity  the 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  35 

prey,  he  would  have  thought  of  his  own  noble  lady 
issuing  from  her  bower  to  welcome  her  lord  home 
from  the  battlefield  or  the  chase. 

One  more  feudal  characteristic  of  the  South  may 
now  be  mentioned,  and  then  we  shall  be  at  liberty 
to  draw  some  conclusions  as  to  what  the  very  hack 
neyed  expression,   "Southern   chivalry,"  actually 
means.    Primogeniture,  although  not  acknowledged 
by  law,  really  nourished  in  the  South;  for  although 
the  head  of  a  house  had  very  few  plans  for  his 
daughter's  future  beyond  marrying  her  off  to  a 
man  of  known  antecedents,  he  did  have  rather  den- 
nite  plans  about  his  sons,  and  especially  about  the 
eldest.     This  young  hero  was  to  become  the  head 
of   the  house,  to  take  the  homestead  plantation, 
and,  if  possible,  to  marry  a  neighbor's  daughter 
and  increase  the  estate.     He  was  usually  sent  to 
Yale  or  Harvard,  and  after  that  to  Europe;  at  any 
rate  he  traveled  about  the  South  on  horseback,  and 
visited  his  scattered  cousins.    It  was  no  great  mat 
ter  if  he  were  not  a  reading  man,  but  he  must  ride 
well,  and  shoot  well,  and  every  manly  accomplish 
ment  he  could  add  to  these  was  so  much  the  better. 
The  Southern  father  would  hardly  have  thanked 
Saint  Bothan  for  the  fact  that  only  one  of  his  sons 
could  pen  a  line,  but  if  one  had  turned  author  in  a 
professional  way,  he  would  have  had  a  sneaking 
feeling  that  the  family  had  been   somehow   dig 
graced.     The  other  learned  professions  were,  how 
ever,  open  to  the  younger  sons  when  there  were  not 
plantations  enough  to  go  the  rounds;  but  as  soon  as 


86  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

these  sons  made  enough  money,  they  proceeded  to 
reestablish  their  position  among  the  gentry  of  their 
native  county  by  the  purchase  of  a  plantation. 
They  then  slaved  the  rest  of  their  lives  at  their 
professions,  trying  to  make  enough  money  to  cover 
their  losses  from  bad  overseers  and  from  a  wasteful 
system  of  culture. 

Little  has  been  said  of  the  pleasant,  easy-going 
side  of  this  life,  of  the  parties  and  balls,  the  Christ 
mas  romps,  the  picnics  and  barbecues,  but  these 
things  have  been  sufficiently  described  time  and 
again.  If  feudal  England  was  merry  England,  the 
feudal  South  was  the  merry  and  the  sunny  South ; 
nay,  more,  it  was  "a  nation  of  men  of  honor  and  of 
cavaliers."  The  South  was  never  barbarous,  for  it 
possessed  a  picturesque  civilization  marked  by  charm 
of  mind  and  manners  both  in  men  and  women. 
But  the  South  had  forgotten  that,  in  the  words  of 
Burke,  "the  age  of  chivalry  is  gone."  It  ignored 
the  fact  that  while  chivalry  was  a  good  thing  in  its 
day,  modern  civilization  is  a  much  higher  thing. 
Even  now  many  otherwise  well  informed  gentle 
men  do  not  understand  the  full  meaning  of  that 
expression  "Southern  chivalry,"  which  they  use  so 
often.  They  know  that  it  stands  for  many  bright 
and  high  things,  but  they  seem  to  forget  its  darker 
meaning.  They  forget  that  it  means  that  the  peo 
ple  of  the  South  were  leading  a  primitive  life,  —  a 
life  behind  the  age.  They  forget  that  it  means  that 
Southerners  were  conservative,  slow  to  change,  con 
tented  with  the  social  distinctions  already  existing. 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  37 

They  forget  all  this,  but  the  expression  has  mean- 
in^  which  probably  were  never  known  to  them. 
It  means  that  Southerners  lived  a  life  which,  though 
simple  and  picturesque,  was  nevertheless  calculated 
to  repress  many  of  the  best  faculties  and  powers  of 
our  nature.     It  was  a  life  affording  few  opportuni 
ties  to  talents  that  did  not  lie  in  certain  beaten 
o-rooves.    It  was  a  life  gaining  its  intellectual  nour 
ishment,  just  as  it  did  its  material  comforts,  largely 
from  abroad,  -a  life  that  choked  all  thought  and 
investigation  that  did  not  tend  to  conserve  existing 
institutions  and  opinions,  a  life  that  rendered  ori 
ginality  scarcely  possible  except  under  the  guise  ot 
eccentricity.     Would  not  such  a  life  produce  pe 
culiarities  and  seeming  inconsistencies  in  a  people, 
and  would  not  a  young  man  shut  out  from  it  long 
to  gain  admission  into  it,  and  form  his  ideas  and 
habits  largely  in  accordance  with  its  spirit? 

So  much  has  been  said  about  the  feudal  element 
in  the  Southern  character  that  there  is  little  time 
left  for  a  discussion  of  the  effects  of  slavery  upon 
that  character.     But  this  subject  has  been  so  often 
treated  that  after  all  there  is  little  reason  to  regret 
the  necessity  for  its  slight  treatment  here.    It  will, 
too,  inevitably  crop  up  all  along  the  course  of  our 
narrative.     Suffice  it,  then,  to  say  that  the  more 
Southern  history  is  studied,  the  more  it  becomes 
apparent  that  slavery  was  a  much  greater  evil  to  the 
master  than  to  the  slave.     Throughout  most  of  the 
South,  certainly  in  the  older  States,  harsh  and  c 

175059 


38  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

masters  were  decidedly  rare.  Where  cruelty  was 
practiced  toward  the  slave,  and  all  of  the  atrocious 
incidents  recorded  in  abolitionist  documents  could 
not  have  been  exaggerated,  the  master  was  gener 
ally  responsible  for  it  only  in  the  way  that  an  ab 
sentee  Irish  landlord  is  responsible  for  the  condi 
tion  of  his  tenants.  The  overseer  in  the  one  case, 
the  steward  in  the  other,  are  the  proximate  causes 
of  the  suffering,  it  being  perfectly  possible  for  both 
slave-owner  and  landlord  to  be  humane  and  hon 
orable  men.  That  they  should  be  considered 
thoughtful  men,  alive  to  a  sense  of  duty,  is  not 
possible ;  and  though  we  may  feel  for  them  when 
they  have  had  their  duties  forcibly  thrust  upon  them 
from  without,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  such  men 
must  at  one  time  or  another  be  awakened  from 
their  slumbers. 

Slavery  lifted  the  African  vastly  in  the  scale  of 
civilization,  and  there  is  no  telling  what  social  and 
economic  benefits  may  in  the  future  flow  from  it. 
But  this  only  palliates  the  evils  of  his  condition 
to  the  ex-slave  and  his  freed  descendants;  it  does 
not  affect  our  judgment  of  the  slavers  who  cap 
tured  or  of  the  masters  who  bought.  The  only  and 
sufficient  excuse  that  can  be  made  for  these  men  is 
the  same  excuse  that  can  be  made  for  the  English 
legislators  who  allowed  thousands  of  poor  wretches 
to  suffer  more  under  absurd  penal  statutes  than  was 
ever  suffered  by  an  African  slave  under  an  over 
seer's  lash,  — want  of  thought  and  a  desire  to  let 
things  be. 


SEEKING  A    VOCATION.  39 

But  if  the  effects  of  slavery  upon  the  slave  were 
of  a  mixed  nature,  the  effects  upon  the  master  were 
almost  wholly  bad.  He  became  an  aristocrat  and 
yet  claimed  to  be  a  democrat;  hence  he  strove  to 
resist  the  course  of  development  his  country  was 
taking,  and  was  crushed  in  the  attempt.  His  re 
lations  with  his  aristocratic  neighbors  developed  his 
chivalric  qualities,  and  made  him  fall  behind  his 
age.  His  power  as  a  landed  and  slave  proprietor 
drove  out  the  small  yeoman,  cowed  the  tradesman 
and  the  mechanic,  and  deprived  the  South  of  that 
most  necessary  factor  in  the  development  of  a  na 
tion's  greatness,  a  thrifty  middle  class.  He  became 
day  by  day  more  conservative,  more  inert,  more 
proud.  When  he  was  aroused  it  was  oftener  by 
scorn  and  passion,  by  a  determination  to  carry  his 
own  policy  with  a  high  hand,  than  by  the  prompt 
ings  of  a  generous  ambition  or  a  wide  -  reaching 
sympathy.  Hence  he  could  make  a  dashing  poli 
tician  of  himself,  but  not  a  statesman ;  a  vehement 
and  florid  orator,  but  not  a  poet. 

It  would  be  idle  to  attempt  to  enumerate  all  the 
evils  that  inured  to  the  Southern  gentry  from  the 
existence  of  slavery.  It  would  be  equally  idle  to 
enumerate  the  brighter  features  of  the  system. 
That  it  was  wasteful  and  ruinous;  that  it  was 
founded  upon  injustice  or  blindness,  and  continued 
by  blindness ;  that  it  afforded  constant  provocation 
to  the  indulgence  of  lowering  passions,  —  these  are 
truths  that  cannot  be  gainsaid.  That,  in  spite  of 
foolish  and  horrible  laws,  it  lifted  the  status  of  the 


40  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

African;  that  it  fostered  the  beautiful  relations  of 
fidelity  and  protecting  care ;  that  it  reproduced  in 
the  new  world  some  of  the  most  picturesque  features 
of  an  old-world  and  old-time  civilization,  —  these 
also  are  truths  which  some  honest  persons  seem  de 
sirous  to  ignore,  and  which  other  honest  persons 
seem  equally  anxious  to  magnify. 

There  is  one  point  in  this  connection,  however, 
that  deserves  a  brief  notice.  Most  of  the  great 
Southerners  of  the  days  of  Washington  were  as  out 
spoken  about  the  evils  of  slavery  as  their  chief; 
how  was  it  that  forty  years  later  the  leading  men 
of  the  South  wrote  and  thought  of  slavery  as  of  an 
institution  established  and  blessed  by  God  himself  ? 
One  reason  is  obvious.  The  trials  of  the  Eevolu- 
tion,  and  of  the  times  immediately  preceding  and 
following  it,  had  taught  Washington  and  his  com 
peers  to  use  their  minds.  They  turned  them  upon 
themselves,  nor  shrank  from  the  painful  but  logical 
conclusions  forced  upon  them.  Seventy  years  later 
this  was  changed.  The  stimulus  of  a  great  crisis 
having  been  withdrawn,  the  incapacity  of  the  easy 
going  cavalier  for  grappling  with  great  moral  prob 
lems  became  more  and  more  apparent.  His  pocket 
grew  larger  and  his  mind  narrower,  as  the  market 
for  his  great  agricultural  staples  increased.  What 
wonder  that  he  forgot  the  warning  words  of  his  wise 
forerunners !  When  the  rest  of  the  world  woke  up 
at  last,  though  shamefully  late,  to  the  horrors  of 
the  slave  system  even  under  its  most  favorable 
aspects,  he  awoke  only  to  the  fact  that  he  was  be- 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  41 

ing  criticised ;  that  his  critics  frequently  used  harsh 
words  and  did  not  appreciate  his  good  qualities. 
He  felt,  but  he  did  not  think.  At  best  he  thought 
backwards,  and,  with  his  feelings  for  a  guide,  be 
gan  to  use  his  by  no  means  inconsiderable  powers 
of  mind  in  the  erection  of  a  system  of  political  and 
social  philosophy  which,  as  an  exhibition  of  what 
wrong-headed  honesty  can  accomplish  in  the  way 
of  self -stultification,  has  never  had  an  equal  in  the 
world's  history. 

Now  this  incapacity  to  reason  clearly,  with  the 
direful  consequences  that  flowed  from  it,  —  social 
decay,  war,  and  painful  reconstruction,  —  is  charge 
able  to  no  one  man,  and  deserves  no  words  of 
blame.  The  evils  of  an  institution  like  slavery  are 
vastly  multiplied  for  each  succeeding  generation. 
The  economic  and  selfish  interests  of  the  master 
grow  stronger  year  by  year.  The  dangers  arising 
from  domestic  insurrection  and  from  foreign  inter 
ference  become  more  and  more  imminent.  And 
finally  the  evil  effects,  mental  and  moral,  of  over- 
lordship —  arrogance,  contempt  for  inferiors,  in 
ertia  of  mind  and  body  —  continue  to  sap,  with 
increasing  force,  the  vigor  of  the  individual  and  of 
the  State.  Under  such  conditions  and  with  his  in 
herited  qualities,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  South 
erner  of  the  days  of  nullification  was  inferior  to  his 
revolutionary  sire.  Slavery  and  feudalism  had 
combined  and  done  their  work  effectively. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  see  that  the  incon 
sistencies  pointed  out  in  the  character  of  the  South 


42  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

Carolinian,  if  inconsistencies  at  all,  were  such  only 
in  an  objective  sense.  Their  existence  did  not  im 
ply  a  want  of  consistency  of  feeling  or  action  on 
the  part  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  little  State.  It 
was  natural  for  such  a  people  to  be  extremely  con 
servative,  and  yet  to  be  easily  swayed  in  their  pas 
sions  whenever  they  fancied  that  they  were  being 
insulted  or  imposed  upon.  It  was  natural  for 
them  to  proclaim  themselves  to  be  democrats,  and 
yet  not  cease  to  be  aristocrats ;  for  every  member 
of  that  aristocracy  claimed  equal  rights  with  every 
other,  and  no  one  recognized  the  lower  classes  more 
than  was  absolutely  necessary.  It  was  also  natural 
for  the  modern  representatives  of  an  age  that  pro 
duced  the  Crusades  and  the  knightly  encounter  to 
give  their  antagonists  every  opportunity  for  re 
venge  ;  it  was  equally  natural  for  them  to  look  upon 
an  absolute  divorce  with  something  like  horror. 
In  their  contempt  for  native  authors  they  were 
simply  reproducing  a  feeling  common  enough  in 
England  a  century  before.  In  short,  although 
such  causes  as  the  extreme  sultriness  of  his  climate, 
the  intermixture  of  French  blood,  and  the  prepon 
derating  number  of  his  slaves,  may  have  made  the 
South  Carolinian  appear  a  marked  man  even  to  his 
Southern  neighbors,  it  is  apparent  that  his  pecu 
liarities  were  shared  with  all  the  Southern  people, 
and  that  they  were  just  what  might  have  been  ex 
pected  from  a  man  living  in  his  environment  and 
with  his  inherited  qualities. 

Such,  in  the  main,  were  the  men  whom  Simms 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  43 

was  destined  to  live  with,  and  into  whose  society  he 
longed,  as  a  boy,  to  be  admitted.  However  clearly 
he  might  see  their  faults  and  failings,  he  could  not 
escape  from  the  fascination  which  their  easy,  pleas 
ant  life  exerted.  But  while  it  is  both  interesting 
and  important  to  know  something  of  the  influences 
by  which  Simms  was  surrounded,  there  is  some 
danger  that,  if  this  discussion  be  prolonged,  the  ex 
istence  of  that  gentleman  will  be  forgotten.  Let 
us,  therefore,  return  to  him. 

That  a  young  man  who  is  destined  to  make  a  rep 
utation,  great  or  small,  as  a  prose  writer  should 
begin  his  career  by  vainly  attempting  to  write 
verse  is  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  literary  his 
tory.  The  phenomenon  needs  no  comment,  and 
the  biographer  of  such  a  man  is  readily  excused 
from  dwelling  upon  his  hero's  metrical  failures. 
Simms  differs  from  the  common  run  of  would-be 
bards  that  eventually  find  their  true  place  among 
prose-men,  only  by  the  fact  that  to  the  day  of  his 
death  he  never  ceased  to  write  verse,  or  to  feel  that 
he  had  been  cruelly  wronged  by  a  generation  that 
had  refused  to  hail  him  as  an  inspired  poet.  This 
fact  will  naturally  need  explanation,  and  will  force 
me  to  allude  more  often  to  Simms's  poetical  ven 
tures  than  their  intrinsic  worth  would  otherwise 
warrant.  I  shall  endeavor,  however,  to  confine 
myself  to  such  aspects  of  his  forgotten  poetry  as 
have  definite  relations  with  his  more  successful  work 
as  a  romancer,  and  to  such  as  will  illustrate  the 


44  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

merits  and  defects  of  Southern  poetry  in  general. 
And  I  shall  dwell  upon  this  last  point  the  more 
readily  because  I  believe  that  the  best  service  that 
can  be  done  to  the  memory  of  Simms  will  be,  not 
to  hold  him  up  as  an  unjustly  treated  poet,  which  he 
was  not,  or  as  a  partially  successful  romancer, 
which  he  was,  but  to  deal  with  him  as  the  most 
conspicuous  representative  of  letters  the  old  South 
can  boast  of,1  as  a  type  of  a  peculiar  people,  as, 
finally,  a  man  who,  under  harassing  conditions, 
fought  a  brave  fight  to  lead  the  higher  life. 

Probably  the  first  thing  that  our  young  aspirant 
for  fame  did  after  his  return  from  the  Southwest 
was  to  brush  the  dust  from  his  long  abandoned  law 
books.  But  his  study  of  Blackstone  did  not  have 
the  same  effect  upon  him  as  the  study  that  went  to 
the  making  of  the  great  commentaries  had  upon 
Blackstone.  Simms  wrote  no  Farewell  to  his 
Muse.  On  the  contrary,  he  had  not  settled  down 
many  weeks  before  he  was  not  only  writing  new 
verses,  but,  what  is  worse,  publishing  them.  He 
had  some  excuse  for  this  conduct,  however,  for  an 
event  had  occurred  that  demanded  instant  com 
memoration  in  song.  This  event  was  the  death  of 
General  Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney,  which  took 
place  on  the  16th  of  August,  1825.  A  patriotic 
young  poet  could  have  had  no  more  congenial 
theme  than  the  death  of  such  a  man.  General 
Pinckney  represented  all  that  was  venerable  in 

1  Foe  is  excepted,  as  the  South's  claim  to  him  is  not  unimpeach 
able. 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  45 

Carolina's  past.  He  had  received  or  refused  al 
most  every  honor  that  a  republic  could  bestow,  and 
once,  at  least,  words  had  fallen  from  his  lips  that 
his  countrymen  would  not  willingly  let  die. 

It  is  little  wonder,  then,  that  the  "  Courier "  of 
September  14th  should  have  contained  a  compli 
mentary  notice  of  an  anonymous  Monody  on  Gen 
eral  Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney,  which  the  editor 
declared  to  have  proceeded  from  a  hand  not  un 
known  to  his  readers.  It  is  also  no  matter  of  won 
der  that  the  young  poet  adopted  the  heroic  couplet 
as  his  measure,  and  began  by  describing  a  serene 
sunset.  It  is  some  slight  matter  of  surprise,  how 
ever,  that  the  little  volume  has  so  entirely  escaped 
discovery.  Collectors  of  rare  Charlestoniana  have 
never  even  heard  of  it,  and  catalogues  of  great  pub 
lic  and  private  libraries  have  been  searched  for  it 
in  vain.  But  the  cover  in  which  Simms's  own 
copy  once  resided  has  been  seen,  and  with  that  and 
the  extracts  furnished  by  the  "Courier"  critic,  we 
may  well  rest  content. 

In  spite  of  the  "Courier's"  commendation  there 
is  every  reason  to  believe  that  this  patriotic  tribute 
made  no  impression  whatever  upon  the  cultivated 
circles  its  author  particularly  desired  to  reach. 
Most  of  the  elegant  gentlemen  forming  those  cir 
cles  were  still  living,  in  imagination  at  least,  in  the 
time  of  Horace.  If  they  had  come  down  the  cen 
turies  at  all,  they  had  certainly  stopped  at  another 
Augustan  age,  —  that  of  Pope  and  Addison.  Not 
a  few  private  libraries  in  the  South  will  be  found, 


46  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

upon  examination,  practically  to  have  stopped  there 
for  good,  which  is  one  explanation  of  Mr.  Sted- 
man's  correct  surmise  "that  standard  literature,  in 
cluding  poetry,  is  read  with  more  interest  in  the 
South "  than  in  the  North.  It  is  very  often  all 
that  a  Southern  boy  with  a  taste  for  reading  can 
lay  his  hands  on,  unless  he  is  content  with  a  stray 
novel  or  a  contemporary  magazine.  At  the  period 
here  treated  of,  there  were  doubtless  a  considerable 
number  of  book-buyers  in  Charleston,  a  class 
which,  by  the  way,  decreased  as  men  ran  deeper  in 
debt,  grew  more  excited  over  politics,  and  finally 
lost  their  property  in  the  war;  but  they  had  some 
thing  better  to  do,  in  their  own  opinion,  than  to 
encourage  the  efforts  of  native  American  genius, 
especially  of  a  Charleston  nobody.  To  quote  Paul 
Hayne :  "  That  any  man  ignorant  of  the  dead  lan 
guages,  who  could  only  read  Homer  through  the 
medium  of  old  Chapman  or  Pope,  and  whose 
acquisitions  generally  were  confined  to  the  master 
pieces  of  his  own  vulgar  mother  tongue,  should  as 
pire  to  the  honors  of  any  of  the  Muses  seemed 
monstrous  and  absurd.  The  sole  arbiters  of  taste 
in  a  comparatively  small  provincial  town,  they 
treated  the  maiden  effusions  of  our  author  with 
good-natured  contempt."  How  Simms repaid  them 
in  kind  will  be  seen  hereafter. 

These  supercilious  critics  came  near  having  an 
other  opportunity  to  show  their  scorn  of  Simms  and 
his  like.  The  young  gentleman  devoted  many 
hours  that  should  have  been  given  to  Blackstone  to 


SEEKING  A   VOCATION.  47 

polishing  his  precocious  play  on  the  fortunes  of 
Roderick.  He  then  submitted  it  to  a  manager,  who, 
strange  to  say,  accepted,  announced,  and  put  it  in 
rehearsal.  A  subsequent  quarrel  with  his  bene 
factor  induced  Simms  to  withdraw  the  play,  and 
although  he  immediately  wrote  two  new  ones,  he 
had  the  sense  to  burn  them.  Had  he  not  quar 
reled  with  Holman  (or  Gilfert,  that  gentleman's 
son-in-law  and  successor)  he  would  have  had  to  run 
a  very  severe  critical  gauntlet.  For  those  were  the 
golden  days  of  the  drama  in  Charleston,  when 
Cooper  often  drove  up  to  the  Broad  Street  Theatre 
in  the  gig  that  had  carried  him  from  Boston  to  New 
Orleans,  and  when  Crafts  and  his  fellow-connois 
seurs  sat  in  state  and  weighed  out  their  applause 
with  judicial  hands. 

Meanwhile  he  had  himself  been  acting  a  rather 
serious  part  in  life's  drama  for  a  poor  young  man 
of  twenty.  On  October  19,  1826,  he  had  been 
married  to  Miss  Anna  Malcolm  Giles.  Little  is 
known  of  her  family  save  that  she  was  the  daugh 
ter  of  a  Mr.  Othniel  J.  Giles,  who  appears,  from 
a  stray  notice  gleaned  from  the  "  City  Gazette " 
for  1828,  to  have  been  in  the  city's  employ  as  clerk 
to  the  board  of  commissioners  of  streets  and  lamps. 
This  would  seem  to  preclude  any  possibility  that 
Simms  could  have  bettered  his  affairs  by  his  mar 
riage,  which  was  probably  a  true  love  match  with 
a  girl  he  had  long  known.  Nothing  is  known  of 
the  bride  herself,  save  that  she  was  a  Charlestonian, 
and  two  years  and  a  half  younger  than  her  husband. 


48  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  young  couple 
took  up  their  residence  at  Summerville,  a  suburban 
village,  where  board  was  cheap.  Perhaps,  how 
ever,  this  was  only  a  summer  home. 

As  several  months  were  to  run  before  he  could 
be  admitted  to  the  bar,  our  poet  had  abundant  lei 
sure  to  prepare  his  second  volume  for  the  press. 
On  New  Year's  Day,  1827,  therefore,  he  signed  an 
advertisement  to  a  collection  of  poems,  written  for 
the  most  part  before  his  nineteenth  year,  and  en 
titled  "Lyrical  and  Other  Poems."  As  Simms 
subsequently  suppressed  his  youthful  ventures,  this 
volume  is  now  quite  rare ;  but  it  would,  have  be 
come  so  even  if  its  author  had  not  lifted  a  finger 
for  its  destruction.  Its  prevailing  tone  was  of 
course  Byronic,  and  when  the  poet  grew  tired  of 
reciting  the  woes  of  the  Greeks,  he  could  draw  on 
his  own  southwestern  experiences  and  recite  those 
of  the  Creeks.  The  general  impression  produced 
is  that  the  young  writer  has  ability,  but  not  of  a 
poetic  order.  There  is  a  certain  fluency  of  diction 
and  directness  of  expression  that  suggest  the  possi 
ble  development  of  a  serviceable  prose  style,  but 
there  is  an  utter  absence  of  that  charm  which,  ac 
cording  to  Matthew  Arnold,  makes  the  "  song  of 
the  poet  divine."  There  is  a  commonplaceness 
both  of  matter  and  style  that  more  than  neutralizes 
the  facility  and  correctness  that  mark  the  verses ; 
and  one  perceives  that  this  facility  and  correctness 
will  stand  greatly  in  Simms 's  way  as  a  poet  by 
making  him  disdain  to  take  pains  with  his  work. 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  49 

Whether  he  would  ever  have  got  pleasure  out  of 
"poetic  pains"  may  be  doubted  in  spite  of  Cow- 
per's  authority.  Southerners  did  not  usually  like 
to  work. 

But  however  unsuccessful  his  poetry,  Simms 
could  at  least  flatter  himself  that  he  had  striven  to 
relieve  his  section  from  the  reproach  of  having  done 
little  or  nothing  toward  the  creation  of  a  national 
literature.  It  was  an  auspicious  moment  for  such 
an  undertaking.  In  the  North,  Cooper  and  Irving 
were  working  like  bees,  to  say  nothing  of  Bryant 
and  Halleck,  and  Pierpont  and  Percival,  and  the 
lamented  Drake.  But  what  could  the  South  show? 
Maryland  could  indeed  point  to  a  tiny  volume  con 
taining  a  few  lines  of  genuine  poetry,  and  declare 
that  even  in  its  crudest  portions  there  were  traces 
of  a  virility  of  thought  and  expression  not  usually 
perceptible  in  the  work  of  American  poets.  But 
Pinkney  was  to  die  in  a  year  and,  worse  fate,  was 
to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Griswold. 
Virginia  could  say  much  the  same  thing  of  the 
unfortunate  Richard  Dabney, l  who  at  least  escaped 
Griswold,  and  who  was  long  credited,  and  still  is, 
in  Virginia,  with  having  written  Peacock's  "Rho- 
dodaphne."  And  both  States  could  name  poets  of 
a  single  song,  like  Key  and  McClurg,  and  forensic 
rivals,  like  the  elder  Pinkney  and  Wirt.  Besides, 
had  not  Marshall  and  Wirt  published  standard 
biographies,  and  were  not  the  latter's  mild  Addiso- 

1  Foe's    Tamerlane   (Boston,    1827)   would   hardly  have  been 
cited. 


50  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

nian  essays  read  in  all  parts  of  the  land?  Then, 
too,  Georgia  could  boast  of  Eichard  Henry  Wilde, 
albeit  he  was  foreign  born;  and  South  Carolina 
had  Crafts  and  Farmer,  and  Holland  and  Hasell, 
and  Muller  and  Spier  in,  no  matter  if  the  last  three 
were  hardly  remembered  even  in  Charleston  itself. 
They  had  written  prize  poems,  and  therefore  they 
deserved  to  be  remembered,  especially  Spierin,  who 
died  at  sixteen.  So,  at  least,  thought  Simms  when 
twenty  years  later  he  dutifully  collected  their  choi 
cest  pieces  in  "The  Charleston  Book.'*1 

But  although  a  few  Southern  bibliophiles  could 
have  added  to  this  list  of  names,  and  perhaps  felt 
a  faint  glow  of  pride  in  reciting  them,  a  candid 
critic,  even  of  the  year  1827,  would  have  been  com 
pelled  to  confess  that,  if  America  as  a  whole  made  a 
poor  showing  in  literature,  the  South  made  scarcely 
any  at  all.  He  would,  perhaps,  have  accounted 
for  this  state  of  things  by  pointing  out  the  imma 
turity  of  the  country,  the  absence  of  towns  which 
could  act  as  literary  centres  and  furnish  publishers, 
and  the  absorption  of  the  upper  classes  in  politics 
and  in  social  pleasures.  How  far  slavery  accounted 
for  these  facts  and  how  far  it  had  injured  the  South 
ern  mind,  he  would  hardly  have  thought  it  neces 
sary  to  inquire.  Naturally,  he  could  not  be  ex 
pected  to  know  that  at  that  very  time  New  England 
was  training  up  certain  of  her  sons  whose  literary 
work  would  not  only  redound  to  the  glory  of  the 

1  The  only  example  I  know  of  a  Southern  "annual  "  — if  the 
name  be  applicable  where  only  one  volume  is  published. 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  51 

whole  country,  but  would  also  confute  forever  the 
pretensions  of  Slavery  to  rank  with  Freedom  as 
the  nurse  and  guardian  of  genius. 

There  was  room,  then,  for  a  new  Southern  writer, 
if  Slavery  still  wished  to  continue  the  unequal  con 
test  ;  and  the  death  of  Crafts  had  left  an  especially 
good  opening  in  Charleston.  But  in  the  opinion 
of  the  Charlestonians,  this  opening  could  be  filled 
by  one  man  only,  —  Hugh  Swinton  Legare,  whose 
prodigious  performances  at  the  new  state  college 
were  still  remembered.  Legare  was  certainly  able 
to  fill,  and  more  than  fill,  Crafts 's  place.  As  we 
glance  over  the  latter 's  remains  and  note  the  thin 
quality  of  his  essays  and  orations,  and  the  still  thin 
ner  quality  of  his  poetry,  we  wonder  that  there  could 
ever  have  been  a  time  and  place  when  such  a  man 
could  have  been  considered  a  great  literary  light. 
But  we  remember  the  "  Brazen  Treasury  of  Songs 
and  Lyrics  "  of  Mr.  Griswold,  and  are  silent.  Le 
gare,  who  was  to  keep  Simms  for  years  out  of  his 
rightful  position  as  the  first  of  Southern  authors,  — 
at  least  in  the  eyes  of  the  South  Carolinians,  —  was 
a  writer  of  far  more  weight  than  Crafts ;  but  in  his 
case,  unfortunately,  weight  meant,  as  it  so  often 
does,  lack  of  creative  power  and  positive  dullness. 
In  spite  of  all  that  has  been  said  of  his  brilliancy, 
in  spite  of  his  remarkable  scholarship,  which  in  the 
special  department  of  the  civil  law  was  perhaps  su 
perior  to  that  of  any  other  American  of  his  day,  I 
have  to  confess  that  I  laid  down  the  two  thick  vol 
umes  of  his  works  with  a  sigh  of  relief  and  regret. 


52  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

Of  relief,  because  I  had  discharged  the  duty  I  owed 
to  one  of  the  few  classic  writers  of  my  section ;  of 
regret,  because  I  could  not  but  acknowledge  that 
here  was  another  instance  of  the  fact  that  great  in 
dustry  and  great  learning  cannot  of  themselves  make 
a  man  a  great  writer.  His  scholarship  was  not 
even  of  service  in  popularizing  the  scholarly  work 
of  others;  for  who  of  his  luxuriously  inclined 
Southern  readers  could  have  read  without  napping 
his  long  essays  on  Athenian  and  Roman  history  in 
the  "  Southern  Review "  ?  If  they  were  read 
through,  then  our  ancestors  were  more  patient  and 
long-suffering  than  they  are  usually  supposed  to 
have  been. 

But  after  all,  the  Charlestonians  were  perhaps 
right  in  putting  Legare  into  the  vacant  seat  of 
honor  and  in  coupling  his  name  with  that  of  the  far 
from  heavy  and  scholarly  Wirt.  Certainly  no  one 
could  have  foretold  from  the  "Lyrical  and  Other 
Poems  "  that  a  youngster  who  had  frequently  car 
ried  pill  boxes  and  medicine  bottles  through  the 
streets  of  Charleston  would  at  no  distant  day  stand 
forth  to  the  world  as  the  chief,  if  not  the  sole  liter 
ary  man  of  his  State  and  the  recognized  delineator 
of  her  manners  and  customs. 

On  April  17,  1827,  his  twenty-first  birthday, 
Simms  was  admitted  to  the  bar.  That  he  was 
speedily  successful,  for  a  beginner,  may  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  his  receipts  from  his  first  year's 
practice  amounted  to  six  hundred  dollars.  Most 
young  married  men  in  his  position  would  probably 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  53 

have  stuck  to  the  law  and  let  poetry  go;  but 
Simms  thought  otherwise.  It  was  well  enough  to 
be  able  to  defend  a  murderer  in  a  style  which  a 
bystander  has  described  as  "vehement,  earnest, 
dramatic;"  but  his  earnestness  and  his  dramatic 
talents  ought  to  be  reserved  for  higher  things.  He 
accordingly  celebrated  the  close  of  the  year  with 
another  still  more  daringly  Byronic  volume,  enti 
tled  "Early  Lays." 

In  this  he  actually  gave  his  own  "Apostrophe  to 
Ocean  "  in  orthodox  Spenserian  stanzas,  and  then 
proceeded  to  sing  the  praises  of  another  favorite, 
Thomas  Jefferson.  It  can  be  seen,  however,  that 
the  history  and  legends  of  his  State  and  section  are 
beginning  to  fascinate  him,  and  one  is  willing  to 
read  a  poem  on  "The  Last  of  the  Yemassees,"  in 
consideration  of  the  pleasure  already  derived  from 
what  is,  perhaps,  the  most  popular  of  his  romances. 

Meanwhile  a  daughter  had  been  born  to  him 
(November  11,  1827),  and  christened  Anna  Au 
gusta.  She  was  the  only  child  his  first  wife 
brought  him,  and  for  this  reason  she  became  espe 
cially  dear  to  him.  But  the  addition  to  his  family 
made  him  doubly  anxious  to  add  to  his  income,  and 
as  many  a  fond  dreamer  had  done  before  him,  he 
resolved  to  rely  solely  on  his  pen.  His  law  books 
were  abandoned;  and  in  June,  1828,  he  issued  a 
prospectus  for  a  new  literary  magazine  in  conjunc 
tion  with  James  W.  Simmons.  It  may  be  gath 
ered  from  this  prospectus  that  a  paper  called 
"The  Tablet"  had  been  running  for  some  time  in 


54  WILLIAM  GILMOEE 

Charleston,  probably  under  the  editorship  of  Mr. 
Simmons,  who  was  not  only  a  friend  of  Simms's, 
but  also  a  brother  poet  in  a  small  way.  It  was  now 
proposed  to  enlarge  this  paper  to  a  monthly  mag 
azine  of  sixty-four  pages,  to  be  entitled  "The 
Tablet,  or  Southern  Monthly  Literary  Gazette." 
On  Saturday,  September  6th,  the  first  number  was 
issued  and  was  complimented  in  the  "  City  Ga 
zette."  The  experiment  was  continued  through 
two  half-yearly  volumes ;  but  as  each  number  fell 
dead  from  the  press,  and  as  the  pockets  of  both 
partners  began  to  suffer,  it  was  considered  that 
enough  had  been  done  for  the  glory  of  Southern 
literature,  and  publication  was  discontinued. 

It  has  been  impossible,  so  far,  to  discover  a 
complete  set  of  this  short-lived  periodical,  but  a  few 
of  Simms's  contributions  have  been  preserved. 
One,  a  notice  of  a  long-forgotten  book,  is  charac 
terized  by  a  successful  assumption  of  the  omni 
scient  tone  of  an  Edinburgh  reviewer ;  another  crit 
icises  the  prying  tendencies  of  modern  biographers 
with  a  vim  and  directness  which,  if  not  convincing, 
are  at  least  refreshing  —  to  a  biographer.  The 
readers  of  the  number  for  July  1,  1829,  were  also 
treated  to  some  fragments  of  an  oration  delivered 
the  previous  year  by  Mr.  Simms,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  fifty-second  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Fort 
Moultrie.  The  Palmetto  Society,  before  which  it 
was  delivered,  appears  to  have  languished  after 
the  anniversary  just  mentioned;  but  this  fact  is  to 
be  attributed  to  the  proximity  of  the  Fourth  of 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  55 

July,  and  not  to  the  character  of  Simms's  oration, 
which  seems  to  have  been  as  patriotic  and  florid  as 
the  tastes  of  his  hearers  could  well  have  demanded. 
The  fact  that  he  was  selected  as  orator  shows  that 
he  was  not  absolutely  ignored  in  his  native  city ; 
and  it  is  interesting  to  think  that  he  may  have  had 
among  his  hearers  no  less  a  personage  than  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  who  was  at  that  time  serving  as  E.  A. 
Perry  in  Battery  H,  First  Artillery,  stationed  at 
Fort  Moultrie. 

But  our  two  co-workers  in  behalf  of  Southern 
literature  were  not  alone  either  in  their  efforts  or 
in  their  failures.  Older  men  of  greater  distinction 
and  resources  had  awakened  to  the  fact  that  the 
South  had  no  proper  medium  through  which  the  few 
writers  and  thinkers  she  possessed  could  make  their 
'ideas  public.  But  these  gentlemen  had  the  true 
Southern  contempt  for  small  things.  Nothing  but 
a  quarterly  review  of  the  approved  English  type 
would  comport  with  the  dignity  of  Charleston ;  for 
did  not  Boston  glory  in  that  decorous  periodical 
the  "  North  American  Review  "?  What  New  Eng 
land  could  do,  the  South  could  do;  so  Elliott  and 
Legare  set  to  work  with  a  will,  and  launched  the 
"  Southern  Review." 

The  first  number  of  this  child  of  many  prayers 
saw  the  light  in  February,  1828.  All  the  pride 
and  all  the  talent  of  South  Carolina  were  interested 
in  its  success.  Not  only  would  it  give  Southern 
writers  an  organ,  and  show  the  rest  of  the  world 
what  things  they  could  do;  it  would  also  dissemi- 


56  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

nate  the  true  and  only  political  doctrine  of  the 
divine  rights  of  States.  But  alas!  not  even  an 
orthodox  quarterly  review,  conducted  by  brilliant 
men,  backed  by  public  sentiment,  and  supported 
by  such  contributors  as  Cooper,  Nott,  and  Henry, 
of  the  College,  and  McCord,  Grimke,  Turnbull, 
William  Elliott,  and  the  two  editors  from  the  city 
and  State  at  large,  could  "create  a  soul  under  the 
ribs  of  death,"  a  Southern  literature  under  the 
shadow  of  slavery.  Even  in  Boston  the  "North 
American  "  was  dragging  along  in  a  dull  and  weary 
way;  and  it  was  not  at  all  certain  that  such  stately 
periodicals  could  flourish  anywhere  on  this  side  of 
the  water.  To  expect  one  to  flourish  in  a  small 
city,  in  an  isolated  section,  where  the  people  read 
little  and  were  disinclined  to  trouble  themselves 
about  such  a  trifling  thing  as  paying  a  subscrip 
tion,  argued  an  ingenuousness  on  the  part  of  the 
editors  as  noble  as  it  was  chimerical.  One  is  not 
surprised,  therefore,  to  read  a  conspicuous  notice 
in  the  fifteenth  number,  requesting  subscribers  to 
pay  up,  or  to  find  Elliott  and  Legare  withdrawing 
and  leaving  their  bantling  to  die  on  the  hands  of 
the  former's  son,  Stephen  Elliott,  Junior,  after 
wards  first  bishop  of  Georgia. 

But  they  had  made  a  gallant  struggle  for  four 
years,  and  their  review  had  been  a  credit  to  them  in 
many  ways.  If  the  articles  look  long  and  dry  to 
us,  it  must  be  remembered  that  such  will  before 
long  be  the  fate  of  the  article  we  read  only  yester 
day  in  our  favorite  English  review;  if  they  seem 


SEEKING  A  VOCATION.  57 

to  bristle  with  quotations,  we  must  remember  that 
the  South  was  not  yet  awake  to  the  fact  that  the 
eighteenth  century  was  defunct ;  and  if  some  lucu 
brations  of  not  the  least  length  are  unmistakably 
padded,  we  must  remember  that  not  infrequently 
one  man  (Legare)  had  to  furnish  half  the  contents 
of  a  number.  It  is  not  likely  that  many  individ 
uals,  even  of  the  most  loyal  class  of  Southerners, 
have  ever  been  tempted  to  look  inside  the  covers 
of  the  eight  formidable  volumes  that  represent  the 
labors  of  Legare  and  his  friends.  The  present 
writer  does  not  pretend  to  have  mastered  their  con 
tents,  but  he  has  read  enough  to  make  him  respect 
the  zeal  and  talents  of  editors  and  contributors 
alike,  fully  enough  to  make  him  regret  that  such 
zeal  and  such  talents  were  practically  thrown  away 
from  causes  over  which  their  possessors  had  little  or 
no  control.  But  where  Elliott  and  Legare  failed, 
how  could  Simms  and  Simmons  hope  to  succeed  ? 

With  the  failure  of  his  magazine  Simms  was 
under  the  necessity  of  seeking  fresh  employment. 
It  so  happened  that  a  daily  newspaper  of  long 
standing,  the  "City  Gazette,"  was  for  sale,  and  he 
determined  to  invest  in  this  manner  the  remains  of 
the  small  property  that  had  come  to  him  through 
his  mother.  A  practical  printer,  E.  S.  Duryea 
by  name,  was  found  who  was  willing  to  form  a 
partnership ;  and  the  new  firm  began  issuing  their 
paper  on  the  first  of  the  new  year  (1830).  A  cur 
sory  comparison  of  the  first  volume  issued  under 
Simms' s  editorship  with  those  that  immediately 


58  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

preceded  it  reveals  the  fact  that  the  local  news  is 
more  fully  reported,  and  that  more  attention  is 
paid  to  current  literature.  Strange  to  say  there 
is  not  a  great  deal  of  poetry,  and  there  is  a  corre 
sponding  paucity  of  editorial  comment  on  passing 
events. 

But  if  Simms  did  not  publish  much  poetry  in  his 
newspaper,  he  did  not  let  his  previous  failures  deter 
him  from  issuing  two  fresh  volumes.  One,  entitled 
"Cortes,  Cain,  and  Other  Poems"  (1829),  was 
only  remarkable  as  containing  "The  Lost  Pleiad," 
the  single  poem  of  his  which  has  approached  popu 
larity,  and  as  showing  the  early  influence  of  Words 
worth  upon  him.  This  influence  could  not  make 
him  a  poet,  but  it  made  him  a  greater  lover  of  na 
ture  and  a  better  and  wiser  man.  In  1830  ap 
peared  "The  Tri-Color,"  a  Byronic  outpouring  in 
honor  of  the  Three  Days  of  July.  It  is  not  sur 
prising  that  an  ardent  Jeffersonian  like  Simms 
should  have  written  on  such  a  subject;  even  staid 
Charleston  gave  banquets  in  honor  of  French  de 
mocracy  ;  but  it  is  a  little  strange  that  a  London 
firm  should  have  thought  fit  to  issue  the  volume  be 
fore  the  end  of  the  year. 

Meanwhile,  South  Carolina  had  entered  upon  a 
crisis  which  brought  no  little  responsibility  to  every 
citizen,  and  especially  to  one  who  had  assumed  the 
role  of  public  instructor.  The  era  of  peace  was 
over,  and  throughout  the  country  little  was  heard 
save  the  jangling  of  rival  politicians  and  the  hypo- 


SEEKING  A   VOCATION.  59 

critical  wailing  of  our  perennial  national  bantling, 
the  Infant  Industry.  In  South  Carolina  matters 
were  much  worse.  The  protective  features  of  the 
tariffs  of  1824  and  1828,  the  increasing  appropri 
ations  for  internal  improvements,  and  the  general 
feeling  of  uneasiness  caused  by  the  agitation  of  the 
slavery  question  at  the  time  of  the  Missouri  Com 
promise,  had  greatly  strengthened  the  hold  of  the 
states-rights  doctrine  upon  the  people  at  large,  and 
had  afforded  ample  opportunity  for  high  and  threat 
ening  talk  to  fiery  and  unbalanced  politicians.  As 
early  as  1822,  the  legislature  had  been  so  far  car 
ried  away  as  to  pass  a  manifestly  unconstitutional 
law  infringing  the  rights  of  free  citizens  of  color 
of  other  States;  and  the  famous  anti-everything 
resolutions1  of  Calhoun's  rival,  Judge  William 
Smith,  were  but  a  less  extreme  indication  of  the 
spirit  pervading  the  body.  The  crowning  rashness 
of  the  ordinance  of  nullification  was  not  far  off, 
when  so  vehement  a  man  as  Judge  Smith  was  de 
posed  from  the  leadership  of  the  states-rights  party 
because  he  was  too  mild. 

During  this  exciting  time  of  resolutions  and  pro 
tests,  and  harangues  and  banquets,  Simms  kept  his 
wits  about  him,  and  attached  himself  closely  to  the 
party  bearing  a  name  which  would  have  seemed 
a  contradiction  in  terms  thirty  years  later,  — 
the  Union  and  States-rights  party.  As  a  patriotic 
young  citizen  and  the  editor  of  an  influential  news 
paper,  he  must  have  been  thrown  into  something 

1  Anti-bank,  anti-tariff,  anti  internal  improvements. 


60  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

like  cordial  relations  with  the  chiefs  of  his  party, 
Petigru,  Legare,  Grimke,  Poinsett,  and  others. 
It  is  at  least  certain  that  at  the  great  Union  cele 
bration  of  the  Fourth  of  July,  1831,  he  repeated 
"A  National  Ode,"  which  was  duly  published  along 
with  the  patriotic  orations  called  forth  by  the  oc 
casion. 

The  cumbrous  name  of  the  party,  in  whose  be 
half  he  opened  his  columns  to  numerous  letters 
signed  by  defunct  Roman  heroes,  had  the  merit  of 
describing  accurately  the  political  principles  he 
held.  He  was  a  states-rights  man,  who  still  ad 
hered  to  the  Union.  But  so  was  Calhoun,  whose 
zeal  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union  was  always 
as  great  as  his  exertions  for  its  destruction. 
Simms,  and  most  of  those  who  thought  and  acted 
with  him  at  this  juncture,  would  have  upheld  as 
strenuously  as  Calhoun  the  ultimate  right  of  a 
State  to  secede.  No  more  than  Calhoun  did  he 
favor  protective  tariffs  and  internal  improve 
ments.  Where,  then,  was  the  difference  between 
them?  It  lay  in  the  fact  that  Simms' s  common 
sense  refused  to  see  that  the  time  had  yet  come  for 
the  application  of  desperate  remedies,  or  that  Cal 
houn 's  scheme  promised  any  remedy  at  all  short  of 
revolution.  A  consistent  Jeffersonian,  he  refused 
to  admit  that  the  Kentucky  and  Virginia  resolu 
tions  could  be  made,  by  any  fair  process  of  reason 
ing,  to  support  the  monstrous  heresy  of  a  separate 
state  veto.  He  naturally  distrusted  a  political 
cure-all  unknown  to  the  founders  of  the  Republic, 


SEEKING  A   VOCATION.  61 

and  only  discovered  and  brought  forward  by  a 
subtle  theorist  to  meet  a  particular  emergency. 
And  yet,  thirty  years  later,  when  he  was  revising 
his  "History  of  South  Carolina,"  he  gave  an  ac 
count  of  this  nullification  movement  that  squinted 
strongfy  in  Calhoun's  direction.  But  this  turning, 
although  it  may  not  be  justified,  will  be  satisfac 
torily  explained,  perhaps,  as  our  narrative  pro 
ceeds. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  to  enter  here  upon  a 
criticism  of  Calhoun's  political  doctrines  or  upon 
an  elaborate  account  of  a  crisis  about  which  so 
much  has  been  written.  Yet  that  crisis,  coming 
as  it  did  at  the  beginning  df  his  career,  could  not 
have  failed  to  exert  some  decided  influence  upon 
the  character  of  our  young  editor.  He  was  com 
pelled  to  choose  his  side  and  to  stand  by  it,  which 
was  an  influence  for  good.  He  became  involved 
in  pecuniary  losses,  and  was  thus  thrown  still  more 
upon  his  own  resources.  His  responsibility  as  a 
public  man,  his  widened  relations  with  his  fellow- 
citizens,  his  experience  of  anxiety  and  defeat, 
strengthened  all  his  powers  and  transformed  him 
from  something  of  a  dreamer  to  a  man  who  never 
afterwards  lost  his  grasp  upon  affairs.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  was  probably  too  young  to  resist  all 
the  unfavorable  influences  that  a  period  of  excite 
ment  is  likely  to  exert.  To  the  day  of  his  death  he 
was  anxious  to  be  recognized  as  an  important  fac 
tor  in  the  politics  of  his  section ;  for  a  long  time  it 
was  known  by  his  friends  that  he  would  not  disdain 


62  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

to  fill  a  respectable  office.  Then  again  his  nullifi 
cation  experiences  taught  him  to  look  too  lightly 
upon  great  political  movements;  they  accustomed 
him  to  discuss  the  pros  and  cons  of  grave  questions 
which  should  have  been  approached  with  awe,  if, 
indeed,  they  should  not  rather  have  been  shunned. 
Finally,  his  awakening  from  his  dreams  must  have 
been  a  rough  one ;  his  ideals  of  human  nature  must 
have  been  lowered,  when  he  saw  brother  divided 
against  brother,  and  gentlemen  ready  to  come  to 
blows  on  the  streets  of  Charleston. 

The  tunes  were  indeed  out  of  joint,  and  neither 
the  firmness  of  Jackson  nor  the  compromises  of 
Clay  were  destined  to  straighten  them.  Petigru 
summed  up  the  state  of  the  case  rather  neatly  when 
he  wrote:  "I  am  devilishly  puzzled  to  know 
whether  my  friends  are  mad,  or  I  beside  myself. 
Let  us  hope  we  shall  make  some  discovery  before 
long,  which  will  throw  some  light  on  the  subject, 
and  give  the  people  the  satisfaction  of  knowing 
whether  they  are  in  their  right  minds.  When 

poor  Judge  W used  to  fancy  himself  a  teapot, 

people  thought  he  was  hypochondriac;  but  there 
are  in  the  present  day  very  good  heads  filled  with 
notions  that  seem  to  me  not  less  strange." 1  Simms 
was  soon  destined  to  experience  in  his  own  person 
the  truth  of  these  remarks. 

He  had  made  himself  quite  conspicuous  by  his 
Union  editorials,  and  by  the  personal  attacks  he 
had  suffered  to  be  printed  in  his  columns.  He 
1  Grayson's  Memoir  of  Petigru,  pp.  118,  119. 


SEEKING  A   VOCATION.  63 

had  helped  the  Union  men  to  carry  the  election 
for  mayor,  or  rather  for  intendant,  in  July,  1830 ; 
and  so  he  was  no  object  of  favor  when,  in  their 
turn,  the  Nullifiers  were  victorious  in  the  election 
for  members  of  the  legislature  in  September  of  the 
following  year.  Shortly  after  this  latter  victory  the 
elated  Calhounites  determined  to  have  a  grand 
torch-light  procession,  the  route  of  which  lay  in 
front  of  the  office  of  the  "Gazette,"  which  then 
stood  on  the  south  side  of  Broad  Street  near  East 
Bay.  The  scene  which  followed  has  been  de 
scribed  by  several  bystanders,  but  no  contemporary 
printed  account  of  it  has  been  discovered. 

The  "Gazette"  office  was  brightly  lighted,  and 
Simms  was  standing  in  the  front  door  alone,  watch 
ing  the  procession.  He  was  known  to  most  of  the 
crowd,  some  of  whom  took  offense  at  what  they  re 
garded  as  his  defiant  attitude,  and  hissed.  He 
looked  scornfully  at  them,  and  muttered,  "Cow 
ards  !  "  Those  near  enough  to  overhear  him  became 
excited  and  made  a  rush  at  the  office.  Simms  stood 
his  ground  and  defied  them.  The  crowd,  being  in 
a  good  humor  from  their  recent  victory,  admired 
the  courage  and  audacity  of  the  man,  and  were 
easily  persuaded  by  some  prudent  friends  of  Dur- 
yea  to  pass  by  with  a  cheer  for  "nullification.'* 
So  Simms's  partner  saved  his  printing  presses,  and 
Simms  his  body  or,  perhaps,  his  life. 

Another  eyewitness,  as  might  have  been  ex 
pected,  reports  the  occurrence  somewhat  differently. 
According  to  this  authority  the  attack  was  made 


64  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

by  day  and  by  an  organized  mob,  composed,  of 
course,  of  the  best  citizens,  rather  than  by  a  jolly 
torch -light  procession.  Simms,  too,  appears  in  a 
more  formidable  guise,  for  he  is  armed.  But  all 
accounts  bear  testimony  to  the  bravery  of  the  man, 
and  to  his  success  in  overawing  his  assailants.1 

Simms  is  described  as  having  been  at  this  period 
a  strikingly  handsome  and  powerful  man.  All 
traces  of  the  weakness  that  marked  his  childhood 
had  disappeared.  He  was  not  far  from  six  feet  in 
height,  and  as  "erect  as  a  poplar,"  with  a  fine  head 
set  upon  broad  shoulders.  Later  in  life  he  inclined 
to  corpulency,  but  now  his  figure  suggested  strength 
and  activity  rather  than  heaviness.  His  brow  was. 
superb,  as  any  one  that  has  seen  J.  Q.  A.  Ward's 
bust  of  him,  on  the  Charleston  Battery,  can  readily 
imagine.  His  bluish-gray  eye,  according  to  Paul 
Hayne,  flashed  like  a  scimitar  in  moments  of  excite 
ment.  As  he  wore  no  beard  in  those  days,  the  res 
oluteness  and  dogged  determination  of  his  heavy 
jaws  and  chin  must  have  told  upon  the  crowd;  and 
the  habitual  curl  of  his  full  lips  must  have  added 
weight  to  his  scornful  words.  There  is  a  combi 
nation  of  the  heavenly  and  the  earthly  in  the  face 
which  Ward  has  given  us  that  finds  its  counterpart 
in  the  life  and  character  of  the  man ;  but  fortu 
nately  the  heavenly  dominates  the  earthly. 

1  The  authorities  relied  on  are  (1)  A  tribute  to  Mr.  Simms  by 
Mr.  A.  P.  Aldrich,  delivered  before  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas 
for  Barnwell  County,  January  term,  1871 ;  (2)  William  L.  King's 
The  Newspaper  Press  of  Charleston,  page  63  ;  (3)  A  letter  received 
by  myself  from  the  late  Mr.  S.  Y.  Tupper  of  Charleston. 


SEEKING  A   VOCATION.  65 

Personal  danger  was  the  least  of  the  troubles  in 
which  Simms's  editorship  of  the  "Gazette"  in 
volved  him.  Even  before  the  triumph  of  the  Nul- 
lifiers  he  complained  publicly  of  having  lost  some 
of  his  subscribers  on  account  of  his  free  expres 
sion  of  Union  principles.  After  the  successful 
election  of  Calhoun's  candidates  in  September,  the 
indignant  editor  felt  bound  to  publish  several  let 
ters  that  had  passed  between  himself  and  gentlemen 
in  the  upper  part  of  South  Carolina  and  at  the 
North.  He  had  been  accused  of  running  his  paper 
and  asserting  his  Union  principles  for  the  pay  and 
in  the  interest  of  wealthy  Northern  manufacturers. 
These  charges  he  indignantly  denied,  and  it  was 
some  consolation  to  be  able  to  insert  a  letter  from 
a  correspondent,  who  spoke  of  the  undoubted  patri 
otism  of  the  ancestors  of  the  leading  Union  men, 
and  alluded  expressly  to  the  fact  that  the  grand 
father  of  W.  G.  Simms  was  one  of  the  hostages 
sent  by  the  British  to  St.  Augustine  during  the 
Revolution.1 

But  ancestral  pride  was  of  little  avail  in  face  of 
the  fact  that  subscriptions  were  running  short  and 
debts  being  incurred  to  keep  the  paper  going.  To 
make  matters  worse  Duryea  died  on  the  25th  of 
March,  1832,  and  on  the  9th  of  April  the  "Ga 
zette  "  appeared,  with  Simms  as  sole  editor  and  pro- 

1  As  the  maternal  grandfather  of  Mr.  Simms  was  just  of  age 
in  1780  and  as  Doctor  Ramsay's  list  of  the  hostages  contains  the 
name  of  Thomas,  and  not  of  John  Singleton,  it  is  reasonable  to  in 
fer  that  the  patriotic  ancestor  referred  to  was  our  editor's  great- 
grandfather. 


66  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

prietor.  He  struggled  on  for  nearly  two  months ; 
then  on  June  7,  it  was  announced  that  the  paper 
had  been  transferred  to  William  Laurens  Poole, 
of  Cheraw,  who  engaged  to  assume  its  politics,  but 
not  its  debts.  With  respect  to  these  latter,  cred 
itors  were  politely  informed  that  Simms  could  be 
found  for  the  present  at  the  office  of  his  friend  Mr. 
Charles  R.  Carroll.  They  doubtless  found  Simms, 
but  they  found  him,  to  use  his  own  expression, 
"over  head  and  ears  in  debt,"  with  every  desire  to 
meet  his  obligations,  but  with  little  prospect  of 
doing  so  in  the  near  future. 


CHAPTER  HI. 

.    A   VOCATION   FOUND. 

PECUNIARY  losses  were  by  no  means  the  only 
troubles  Simms  had  had  to  contend  with  in  recent 
years.  True,  his  house  at  Sutnmerville  had  been 
burned  down,  entailing  the  loss  of  all  his  furniture 
and  of  his  few  heirlooms,  the  most  valuable  of 
which  was  a  picture  of  his  mother.  But  this,  even 
when  taken  in  connection  with  his  debts,  would 
not  have  caused  such  an  energetic  man  to  despond 
for  long.  But  when  he  found  himself  a  widower 
and  doubly  an  orphan,  through  the  deaths  of  his 
father  and  grandmother;  when  he  recollected  that 
he  had  an  infant  daughter  to  provide  for,  and  that 
his  friends  were  both  few  in  number  and  unpopu 
lar  by  reason  of  their  political  views,  he  began  to 
despair  in  good  earnest,  and  to  wonder  what  new 
trials  Providence  had  in  store  for  him. 

His  father's  death  took  place  in  Mississippi, 
March  28,  1830.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that 
Simms  shortly  after  took  a  second  journey  to  the 
Southwest,  probably  with  the  view  of  securing 
whatever  property  had  been  left  him.  The  only 
known  result  of  the  journey  is  to  be  found  in  a  few 
sweet  verses  published  ten  years  later ;  but  it  can- 


68  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

not  be  doubted  that  lie  freshened  and  widened  his 
knowledge  of  the  primitive  people  among  whom  he 
sojourned,  and  that  in  this  way  he  added  to  his  in 
tellectual  capital,  which  was  now  all  he  had  to  draw 
upon.  The  exact  date  of  Mrs.  Gates's  death  has 
not  been  ascertained;  it  is  known,  however,  that 
she  lived  to  see  the  birth  of  her  great-grandchild, 
and  she  could  not  long  have  survived  the  elder 
Simms.  The  "Gazette"  of  February  20,  1832, 
contained  an  invitation  to  the  funeral  of  Mrs. 
Simms,  which  was  to  take  place  from  her  husband's 
residence  on  King-Street-Road,  Charleston  Neck. 
The  cause  of  her  death  is  not  given ;  but  the  young 
widower  alluded  to  his  loss  in  more  than  one  set 
of  mournful  stanzas.  What  disposition  he  made 
of  his  child  is  uncertain,  beyond  the  general  fact 
that  she  was  intrusted  to  some  member  of  her 
mother's  family. 

The  disposition  that  Simms  made  of  himself  was 
a  natural  one.  Everything  that  he  had  tried  at 
Charleston  had  failed,  and  now  that  his  political 
principles  were  in  disrepute,  there  was  still  less 
chance  for  future  success.  On  all  sides  disgusted 
Unionists  were  setting  him  the  example  of  quitting 
the  State;  even  Legare  was  thinking  of  abandon 
ing  his  literary  dictatorship  in  Charleston  for  the 
position  of  charge  d'affaires  at  Brussels.  Simms 
had  fewer  domestic  ties  than  any  of  these  men, 
and  his  State  cared  less  for  him.  Why,  then, 
should  he  stay  only  to  be  reminded  more  and  more 
of  his  father's  prophetic  words?  But  he  would 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  60 

not  go  to  the  Southwest,  as  his  father  had  advised. 
He  had  already  given  up  much  that  he  might  follow 
his  literary  bent,  and  come  what  would  he  was 
resolved  to  keep  on  as  he  had  begun.  But  for  a 
literary  aspirant  the  North  and  not  the  Southwest 
was  the  proper  field. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  be  able  to  record  an  obligation 
to  a  gentleman  whom  every  dabbler  in  American 
literature,  including  the  present  writer,  singles  out 
as  a  proper  object  for  good-natured  contempt  or  for 
positive  scorn.  It  is  the  Reverend  Mr.  Griswold 
who  informs  us  that,  after  traveling  over  the  most 
interesting  portions  of  the  North,  Simms  "paused 
at  the  rural  village  of  Hingham  in  Massachusetts, 
and  there  prepared  for  the  press  his  principal  poet 
ical  work,  'Atalantis,  a  Story  of  the  Sea,'  which 
was  published  at  New  York  in  the  following  win 
ter."  Griswold  got  his  information  in  response  to  a 
letter  which  he  had  addressed  to  Simms  on  the  sub 
ject;  it  is  therefore  likely  to  be  correct.  How  and 
when  the  young  poet  got  to  Hingham  is  uncertain, 
but  he  probably  chose  it  as  a  good  place  for  work 
and  one  fairly  safe  from  the  ravages  of  the  cholera. 
As  soon  as  that  danger  was  nearly  over  (about  the 
second  week  in  September)  he  hastened  to  New 
York,  where  he  had  made,  or  was  about  to  make, 
several  trusty  friends.  Chief  of  these  was  William 
Cullen  Bryant,  who  had  temporarily  removed  to 
Hoboken,  in  order  to  get  away  from  the  cholera 
and  to  be  near  his  friend  Sands.  Thither  Simms 
came  in  the  afternoons,  "and  wandered  with  them 


70  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

along  the  shores,  at  sunset,  or  strolled  away,  up 
the  heights  of  Weehawken,  declaiming  the  graceful 
verses  of  Halleck  upon  the  scene." 1  The  intimacy 
thus  begun  with  Sands  was  soon  cut  short  by  the 
latter 's  premature  death,  but  that  with  Bryant  was 
continued  without  interruption  for  thirty  -  eight 
years.  It  was  further  cemented  by  subsequent 
wanderings  along  Green  River,  and  by  visits  to 
Great  Barrington,  in  Berkshire  County,  Massa 
chusetts,  where  Bryant  had  once  resided,  and  from 
which  the  friends  doubtless  made  frequent  excur 
sions  to  Stockbridge,  to  see  that  exemplary  novel 
ist,  Miss  Sedgwick. 

Another  life  friend  made  at  this  period  was 
James  Lawson,  a  pleasant  Scotchman,  seven  years 
older  than  Simms,  but  possessing  kindred  tastes 
and  aspirations  in  matters  of  literature  and  the 
drama.  Lawson  was  at  this  time  editor  of  the 
"Mercantile  Advertiser,"  and  was,  therefore,  in  a 
position  to  sympathize  with  the  woes  of  the  South 
ern  ex-editor.  His  experience  was  also  of  service 
in  introducing  Simms  to  the  latter 's  first  metro 
politan  publishers,  the  Harpers,  and  he  kindly 
consented  to  see  the  magnum  opus,  "Atalantis," 
through  the  press.  As  a  bachelor  it  became  him 
to  show  the  young  widower  the  city,  and  to  intro 
duce  him  to  his  own  friends  of  both  sexes.  If 
we  may  judge  from  a  letter  of  Simms's,  written 
a  few  weeks  later,  the  Southerner  was  true  to  his 
nature  in  paying  delicate  attentions  to  more  than 
1  Simms,  Southward  Ho,  Chapter  II.  fin. 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  71 

one  fair  maiden  of  Gotham.  He  probably  wrote 
in  their  albums,  and  he  certainly  promised  to  send 
them  barrels  of  peanuts  on  his  return  home.  An 
aesthetically  inclined  biographer  of  the  old  school 
might  have  been  tempted  to  write  "flowers"  for 
"peanuts,"  in  the  above  sentence,  but  nowadays 
one  must  go  by  the  record. 

But  the  theatre  was  the  greatest  source  of  attrac 
tion  to  both  the  friends.  ^Lawson  had  already 
had  a  tragedy,  "Giordano,"  acted  at  the  Park 
Theatre,  in  1828,  and  he  was  an  intimate  friend  of 
TCdwin  Forrest  and  of  the  less  known  George  Hol 
land.  Simms  and  Forrest  were  thus  brought  to 
gether,  though  possibly  at  a  later  period,  and  a 
close  friendship  was  formed  between  them.  He 
saw  and  met  Holland  on  this  visit,  and  was  one  of 
the  enthusiastic  crowd  that  applauded  Miss  Fanny 
Kemble  when  she  made  her  first  bow  to  an  Ameri 
can  audience  as  Bianca,  in  Milman's  "Fazio." 

We  do  not  know  what  other  literary  friends 
Simms  made  on  this  first  visit  to  New  York.  He 
afterwards  came  so  regularly  that  he  became  ac 
quainted  or  intimate  with  nearly  all  the  "literati" 
that  subsequently  fell  into  Poe's  clutches.  Hav 
ing  little  or  nothing  to  do  on  these  visits  besides 
correcting  proofs,  he  spent  his  mornings  in  edito 
rial  offices  and  his  evenings,  when  the  theatre  did 
not  attract  him,  at  literary  receptions  and  snug 
little  parties.  Naturally  he  became  a  well-known 
figure,  and  his  easy  manners  and  fund  of  anecdotes 
gained  him  many  friends.  Indeed,  he  was  for 


72  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

some  time  so  closely  connected  with  New  York  that 
one  is  almost  tempted  to  regard  him  as  a  Knicker 
bocker  author.  These  facts  being  premised,  his 
New  York  friends  will  be  introduced  into  these 
pages  without  formality  whenever  the  necessity 
shall  arise. 

On  October  28,  1832,  Simms  addressed  a  letter 
to  Lawson  from  Summerville.  He  had  escaped 
quarantine,  and  three  days  after  leaving  New  York 
was  "at  his  own  fireside,  laughing  at  law  and  po 
lice,  and  bidding  them  defiance."  The  Nullifiers 
were  triumphing  around  him,  but  he  had  great 
hopes  of  Old  Hickory's  firmness,  and  thought  that 
the  run -mad  theorists  would  not  know  what  to  do 
with  nullification  now  that  they  had  got  it. 
"  Atalantis  "  was  naturally  a  more  important  subject 
to  him  than  politics,  and  he  conjured  Lawson  to 
let  him  know  how  it  was  succeeding.  His  Charles 
ton  friends  were  in  raptures  over  it.  They  were 
welcoming  him  back  with  parties  every  night,  but 
hj  would  settle  down  to  steady  work  next  week; 
in  the  meantime  his  gun  looked  inviting,  and  there 
were  some  doves  to  be  seen  from  his  window  that 
were  evidently  waiting  to  be  shot. 

The  only  note  of  sadness  in  the  letter  appeared 
is*  the  brief  mention  of  the  death  of  a  young  man 
with  whom  Simms  had  recently  traveled,  and  to 
whom  he  had  become  much  attached.  This  was 
Maynard  D.  Richardson,  a  very  stanch  opponent 
of  nullification,  who,  had  he  lived,  might  have  won 
some  reputation  both  as  a  writer  and  as  a  politician. 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  73 

Simms  dedicated  "  Atalantis  "  to  him,  and  the  next 
year  (1833)  wrote  the  memoir  which  was  after 
wards  prefixed  to  a  volume  of  his  remains. 
Whether  Simms  edited  this  volume  is  uncertain, 
but  he  probably  did;  it  is  at  least  certain  that 
twelve  years  later  he  republished  Richardson's  best 
verses  in  "The  Charleston  Book."  These  produc 
tions  show  that  Simms 's  friend  was  not  the  least 
gifted  of  the  ignes  minores  that  lighted  Charles 
ton  during  the  first  quarter  of  this  century. 

Meanwhile,  our  hero  had  left  the  provinces,  where 
sooth  to  say  he  had  been  little  of  a  star,  and  had 
made  his  first  bow  on  a  metropolitan  stage.  In 
plainer  terms,  he  had  published,  in  the  "American 
Quarterly  Review "  for  September,  1832,  a  fairly 
sensible,  but  hurriedly  written  critique  of  Mrs. 
Trollope's  " Domestic  Manners  of  the  Americans," 
and  about  two  months  later,  at  the  somewhat  re 
luctant  hands  of  the  Harpers,  the  ambitious  poem 
"Atalantis."  Griswold  tells  us  that  the  former 
production  "was  reprinted,  in  several  editions,  in 
this  country  and  in  England; "  the  latter  seems  to 
have  waited  until  1848,  when  it  made  its  second 
appearance  in  a  new  but  hardly  improved  form. 

It  is  difficult  for  one  who  has  grown  fond  of 
Simms  the  man  to  criticise  with  impartiality  this 
pet  creation  of  Simms  the  versifier.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  fact  that  posterity  has  consigned  it  to  ob 
livion  tempts  one  to  ignore  the  zeal  and  traces  of 
power  that  are  evident  throughout  its  eighty  pages  ; 
on  the  other,  the  firm  belief  that  Simms  and  some 


74  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

of  his  contemporaries  had  in  its  greatness  tempts 
one  to  put  on  one's  spectacles  and  look  for  beauties 
and  merits  that  do  not  exist.  But  these  tempta 
tions  assail  every  biographer  and  critic ;  and  in  the 
present  case  there  is  no  great  danger  that  serious 
injustice  will  be  done. 

"  Atalantis  "  is  a  story  of  a  sea  fairy  who  is  per 
secuted  with  the  love  of  a  sea  demon,  but  who  finally 
rescues  herself,  and  marries  a  mortal  lover.  The 
scene  shifts  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea  to  the  top 
of  an  enchanted  island  and  the  deck  of  a  Spanish 
barque.  There  are  good  and  bad  spirits  who  sing 
choruses  of  distinctly  iByronic  stamp.  In  brief, 
from  one  point  of  view,  Timothy  Flint  was  right 
when  he  wrote,  in  the  "Knickerbocker,"  that  "At 
alantis"  was  "an  eccentric  sort  of  water-witch 
drama."  But  from  another  point  of  view  Camp 
bell  was  partially  right  when  he  wrote  of  it  as  "a 
well-written  poem  of  a  dramatic  cast,  the  versifica 
tion  of  which  is  polished  throughout,  the  characters 
are  sufficiently  marked,  and  the  machinery  really 
very  beautiful."1  Flint  judged  the  poem  as  a 
whole ;  Campbell  examined  its  parts,  and  saw  that 
its  author  had  considerable  literary  power.  He  did 
not  go  far  enough  in  his  analysis  to  perceive  that 
this  power  was  that  of  the  prose  writer  rather  than 
of  the  poet. 

The  truth  would  seem  to  be  that  in  "Atalantis" 
Simms  attempted  a  very  difficult  task.  Only  a 

1  In  the  Metropolitan  (London)  for  January,  1834,  page  12, 
The  review  is  attributed  to  Campbell  by  Alliboue. 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  75 

poet  like  Milton  or  Shelley,  possessing  an  ima 
gination  of  the  highest  order,  could  possibly  have 
given  life  to  the  characters  our  rash  young  author 
tried  to  set  in  motion;  and  Milton  and  Shelley 
would  have  chosen  better  material  for  the  exercise 
of  their  powers.  Most  poets  would  simply  have 
rendered  both  themselves  and  their  poem  ridiculous. 
It  is  to  Simms's  credit  that  he  does  not  do  this,  pos 
sibly  because  of  the  sincerity  which  always  charac 
terized  his  work.  However  unformed  and  wooden 
his  characters,  however  vague  and  misty  the  action 
of  his  poem,  he,  at  least,  had  seen  those  characters 
act  their  parts  under  the  peaceful  waters  that  sur 
round  Charleston's  "palm-crowned  isles."  As  a 
lonely  boy,  lying  on  the  sands  or  rowing  about  the 
harbor,  he  had  dreamed  of  fairies  and  sea  nymphs 
until  he  almost  believed  in  them.  Some  of  his 
earliest  prose  essays  took  the  form  of  delicately 
framed  fairy  tales,  and  the  spirit  choruses,  and 
indeed  other  parts  of  "Atalantis,"  had  been  writ 
ten  for  years.  It  was  not  his  fault  that  he  did  not 
recognize,  until  he  had  mixed  long  with  the  world, 
that  the  day  for  such  things  had  passed.  He  had 
lived  practically  out  of  the  world,  among  a  prim 
itive  people;  and  his  principal  reading  had  lain 
among  the  older  poets  and  the  mediaevally  inclined 
romancists,  whose  day  was  just  beginning  to  de 
cline.  Nor  was  it  his  fault  that,  like  nearly  all 
Southern  poets  down  to  Sidney  Lanier,  he  failed 
to  exercise  proper  control  upon  his  imagination. 
Self-control  is  essential  to  an  artist,  but  there  was 


76  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

little  in  Southern  life  at  that  time  that  could  teach 
a  man  how  to  control  himself.  In  fact,  a  self -con 
trolled  man  would  have  been  looked  upon  with  dis 
trust  in  the  South.  They  believed  in  inspiration 
and  genius  there,  not  in  hard  work ;  and  so  the  list 
of  Southern  geniuses  is  a  very  small  one.  If  this 
be  not  true,  then  it  is  certainly  a  curious  fact  that 
the  two  greatest  Southern  writers  before  1861,  Poe 
and  Simms,  were  both  men  who  were  constantly 
brought  under  the  sobering  influences  of  the  North. 
The  anonymity  of  "  Atalantis  "  was  not  long  pre 
served,  and  the  fair  success  it  enjoyed  soon  tempted 
its  author  away  from  South  Carolina  to  the  more 
literary  North.  Then,  too,  although  the  ferment 
of  nullification  had  subsided,  he  felt  as  Legare  did, 
in  Brussels,  that  it  was  a  "scandalous  row,"  and 
that  it  was  very  well  to  be  out  of  it.  Accordingly 
we  find  him,  some  time  in  1833,  settled  peacefully  at 
New  Haven  and  meditating  what  literary  work  he 
should  undertake  besides  his  present  task  of  writing 
short  stories  and  poems  for  the  magazines.  At 
length  it  occurred  to  him  that  he  had  a  bundle  of 
manuscript  that  might  be  turned  to  some  account. 
He  had  published  in  the  "Southern  Literary  Ga 
zette"  a  story,  partly  founded  on  facts,  entitled 
"Confessions  of  a  Murderer."  While  editing  his 
daily  newspaper,  he  had  taken  up  this  story  and 
elaborated  it.  Now,  in  New  Haven,  he  determined 
to  make  a  book  of  it.  Such  is  the  genesis  of  his 
first  prose  work,  "Martin  Faber,"  for  his  know 
ledge  of  which  and  for  many  particulars  to  follow, 


A   VOCATION  FOUND.  77 

the  reader  may  consider  himself  indebted  to  certain 
"Personal  and  Literary  Memorials,"  scribbled  off 
by  the  young  author  on  the  fourth  day  of  June, 
1834,  while  he  was  smarting  under  the  stupidity 
and  malignity  of  some  of  his  early  critics. 

When  "Martin  Faber"  was  finished,  Simms 
contracted  with  Babcock,  a  New  Haven  publisher, 
to  have  a  thousand  copies  printed  at  his  own  risk. 
When  six  or  eight  sheets  had  been  printed,  he  in 
closed  them  to  the  Harpers,  saying  that  they  might 
have  the  book  "on  their  own  terms,  they  assuming 
the  cost  of  printing  and  all  the  risk  and  trouble  of 
publication."  This  modest  proposal  was  accepted, 
and  the  story  was  published  at  once,  probably  in 
September.  It  had  a  fine  run.  In  four  days,  only 
one  copy  was  left,  which  was  reserved  for  the 
author,  who  likewise  received  one  hundred  dollars, 
greatly  to  his  delight. 

One  might  imagine  that  he  continued,  for  a  few 
days  at  least,  to  be  fairly  happy ;  but  such  was  not 
the  case,  as  his  own  words  shall  testify :  — 

"But,  as  I  have  said,  the  period  of  its  publica 
tion  was  a  period  to  me  of  bitter  excitement.  I 
had  set  out  to  produce  an  original  book,  and  flat 
tered  myself  to  have  succeeded;  what,  then,  was 
my  surprise  to  perceive,  in  several  of  the  newspa 
pers,  notices,  which,  though  in  all  respects  highly 
favorable,  yet  charged  the  work  with  a  glaring  re 
semblance  to  '  Miserrimus, ' 1  a  work  then  only  re 
cently  put  forth  in  England,  which,  until  after  this 
1  By  F.  M.  Reynolds. 


78  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

period,  I  had  never  read,  and  a  few  of  the  leaves 
only  of  which  I  had  glanced  over  in  the  bookstore 
of  Mr.  Maltby  at  New  Haven.  The  misfortune  of 
'  Martin  Faber  '  consisted  in  being  about  the  same 
length  with  '  Miserrimus, '  in  being  printed  in  sim 
ilar  form,  with  similar  binding,  and  in  comprising, 
like  the  work  to  which  it  bore  so  unhappy  a  re 
semblance,  the  adventures  of  a  bad  man.  There 
was  not  a  solitary  incident,  not  a  paragraph,  alike 
in  the  two  productions ;  and  a  vital  difference  be 
tween  the  two  was  notorious  enough  in  the  fact 
that  the  criminal  in  '  Miserrimus  '  was  such,  with 
out  any  obvious  or  reasonable  cause,  while  '  Martin 
Faber  '  from  the  first  sets  out  with  an  endeavor  to 
show  how  and  why  he  became  a  criminal,  and  has 
a  reason  for  his  offenses.  '  Miserrimus, '  on  the 
other  hand,  does  his  evil  deeds  wantonly,  and  sim 
ply  because  of  a  morbid  perversity  of  mind,  which 
could  only  have  its  sanction  in  insanity.  They  all 
praised,  however,  to  a  certain  extent,  some  of  them 
evidently  without  reading  it." 

After  this  na'ive  vindication  of  himself,  Mr. 
Simms  mentions  a  favorable  criticism  by  Charles 
Fenno  Hoffman,  in  the  New  York  "American,"  and 
a  notice  by  Flint,  in  the  "Knickerbocker,"  wherein 
the  hero  was  pronounced  to  be  unnatural,  and  the 
story  to  be  horrible,  though  powerful.  But  here 
the  youthful  author  confounded  his  critic  by  point 
ing  out  that  Flint  himself,  in  the  same  number  of 
the  magazine,  had  translated  a  French  story,  the 
sub-title  of  which  was  "The  Butcher  of  Girls." 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  79 

Yet  Simms  could  defend  himself  in  less  peaceable 
ways,  as  the  following  incident  plainly  shows. 

On  the  Monday  after  "Martin  Faber  "  was  pub 
lished,  he  called  on  the  Harpers,  who  referred  to 
the  criticism  in  the  "American,"  and  asked  if  he 
knew  Hoffman.  Receiving  a  prompt  negative, 
they  showed  some  surprise,  which  they  explained 
by  stating  that  a  Doctor  Langtree  had  said  that 
Simms  and  Hoffman  were  bosom  friends,  which 
accounted  for  the  favorable  nature  of  the  latter 's 
criticism.  On  this  slight  provocation  our  warm 
blooded  author  grew  angry,  and,  after  getting  fur 
ther  proofs,  proceeded,  in  company  with  his  friend 
Randell  Hunt,1  to  call  upon  the  talkative  physi 
cian.  Langtree  (Samuel  Daly  Langtree,  afterwards 
editor  of  the  "Knickerbocker")  rather  evaded 
Simms 's  questions  by  answering  that  he  had  not 
read  "Martin  Faber."  Whereupon  Simms  de 
manded  a  statement  in  writing  of  what  had  really 
been  said.  Langtree  declining,  the  fiery  author 
would  have  proceeded  to  violent  measures,  had  not 
his  friend  Hunt  interposed  and  induced  Langtree 
to  write  his  denial.  When  Langtree  begged  that 
the  paper  should  be  shown  to  the  Harpers  only, 
Simms  declared  that  he  would  show  it  to  anybody. 
He  forthwith  took  it  to  Mr.  Peabody,  publisher  of 
the  "Knickerbocker,"  who  had  heard  Langtree 's 
remarks.  Peabody,  with  an  eye  to  business,  advised 
him  to  publish  the  statement,  as  it  would  sell  his 

1  An  ardent  anti-nullifier  afterwards  a  successful  lawyer  in 
Louisiana. 


80  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

book,  to  which  Simms  replied  that  he  was  a  gen 
tleman  before  he  was  an  author. 

This  trivial  incident  has  been  recorded  with  mi 
nuteness  because  it  is  very  characteristic  of  the 
man  and  of  his  section.  He  felt  even  then  that  he 
was  among  a  people  who  did  not  understand  him, 
and  he  made  the  mistake,  so  often  made  by  his  com 
patriots,  of  thinking  that  he  must  be  aggressive  in 
order  to  keep  from  being  imposed  upon.  Natu 
rally  he  was  less  understood  than  before ;  and  with 
equal  reason  those  who  observed  and  criticised 
his  action  failed  to  see  how  thoroughly  in  keeping 
it  was  with  the  influences  that  had  been  brought 
to  bear  upon  him  since  his  birth.  From  just  such 
trivial  incidents  Northerners  and  Southerners  used 
to  judge  one  another ;  and  we  cannot  be  too  thank 
ful  for  the  fact  that  there  are  now  forces  at  work 
which  will  enable  the  two  sections  to  form  their  fu 
ture  judgments  on  far  more  reasonable  and  tenable 
grounds.  The  subject  may  be  dismissed  with  the 
remark  that  when  Doctor  Langtree  succeeded  Flint 
in  the  editorship  of  the  "Knickerbocker,"  he  was 
able  to  pay  off  his  score  against  Simms  by  some 
rather  irritating  criticisms. 

Simms  has  now  been  heard  on  the  subject  of  his 
first  venture  in  prose  fiction,  has,  in  fact,  been  al 
lowed  to  criticise  himself.  A  modern  reader  would 
hardly  agree  with  him  in  his  estimate  of  his  own 
work,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Poe  subsequently 
praised  it.  For,  however  original  Simms  may  have 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  81 

thought  himself,  and  however  real  the  facts  upon 
which  his  story  was  based,  one  has  little  diffi 
culty  in  seeing  that  he  was  simply  following,  with 
hops  and  jumps,  the  devious,  dark,  and  uncanny 
paths  where  Godwin  had  once  walked  with  a  stately 
tread.  It  is  true  that  he  not  infrequently  takes  a 
leap  that  would  be  impossible  to  a  man  not  en 
dowed  with  strength  and  activity,  but  one's  admi 
ration  of  his  agility  is  not  sufficient  to  make  one 
follow  him  willingly.  But  one  does  follow  him, 
willy-nilly,  and  therefore  those  critics  were  right 
who,  while  observing  his  indebtedness  to  Godwin, 
and  while  expostulating  against  his  jerky  style 
and  his  extravagances  of  character  and  action, 
nevertheless  saw  in  him  promise  of  future  power 
and  usefulness.  Simms,  as  we  have  seen,  felt  no 
great  love  toward  these  critics,  and  when  "Martin 
Faber  "  was  reissued  in  1834,  he  wrote  a  preface 
which,  from  its  lengthy  animadversions  upon  his 
reviewers,  was  enough  to  make  his  readers  fear  that 
a  second  Cooper,  as  unamiable  as  the  first  and  cer 
tainly  less  able,  had  been  added  to  American  liter 
ature.  But  he  felt  their  strictures  sufficiently  to 
omit  "Martin  Faber"  from  the  revised  edition  of 
his  works,  issued  twenty  years  later. 

There  is  no  need  at  this  late  day  to  criticise  mi 
nutely  the  story  of  a  criminal  who  out-fathoms 
Count  Fathom,  and  throws  Jonathan  Wild  in  the 
shade.  Poe  was  doubtless  attracted  by  its  grue- 
someness,  and  by  the  way  in  which  Simms  de 
veloped  some  circumstantial  evidence.  A  modern 


82        .         WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

lover  of  Mr.  Browning  might  still  find  some  plea 
sure  in  contrasting  the  crude  horror  of  Faber's  last 
hours  in  prison  with  the  great  poet's  more  artistic 
presentation  of  the  last  moments  of  Count  Guido. 
But  most  readers  of  the  present  day  would  turn 
with  loathing  from  the  book;  and  few  would  read 
far  enough  to  note  the  early  appearance  of  a  fault 
which  was  to  mar  all  of  Simms's  future  work,  — 
careless  inattention  to  details,  consequent  upon  hur 
ried  writing.  What  is  one  to  say  of  an  author  who 
describes  a  brilliant  and  fashionable  wedding  as 
occurring  in  a  stagnated  village  of  some  sixty  fam 
ilies?  or  of  one  who  gives  the  same  village  an  art 
gallery,  where  exhibitions  are  held  yearly  with  a 
hundred  pictures  lining  the  wall? 

Shortly  after  the  publication  of  "Martin  Faber," 
Simms  seems  to  have  taken  a  trip  to  Philadelphia, 
in  company  with  Timothy  Flint,  and  there  to  have 
made  arrangements  for  the  speedy  appearance  of 
another  book,  a  collection  of  short  tales  entitled 
"The  Book  of  My  Lady."  These  stories,  most  of 
which  had  previously  seen  the  light  in  magazines, 
deserve  only  one  brief  comment.  Some  of  them 
show  that  Simms  was  master  at  times  of  a  prose 
style  which,  if  not  charming,  might  nevertheless 
have  been  made  with  a  little  pains  distinctly  grace 
ful.  Unfortunately  as  the  years  went  by,  and  as 
the  temptation  to  do  hurried  work  became  less  easy 
to  resist,  his  style  lost  these  early  traces  of  pleasing 
qualities,  and  was  never  more  than  a  serviceable 
style  with  some  strength,  but  with  a  constant  ten- 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  83 

dency  to  become  slipshod.  It  may  also  be  men 
tioned  that  many  of  the  tales  in  this  collection  were 
subsequently  republished  in  various  forms;  for 
Simms,  like  Poe,  was  a  great  believer  in  the  abil 
ity  of  the  public  to  swallow  any  amount  of  rehashed 
work. 

The  year  1834  probably  found  Simms  again  in 
New  York,  since  his  first  elaborate  romance,  "  Guy 
Rivers,"  demanded  his  presence  as  proof-reader. 
Charleston,  meanwhile,  had  not  treated  him  much 
more  kindly,  for  some  time  in  1833  he  had  at 
tempted  to  start  there  a  new  publication  somewhat 
after  the  order  of  "Salmagundi,"  and  had  dismally 
failed.  This  was  "The  Cosmopolitan:  an  Occa 
sional,"  which  seems  not  to  have  got  beyond  its 
first  number.  In  his  "debut  "  Simms  professed  to 
be  one  of  a  club  of  three,  whose  lucubrations  were 
intended  to  furnish  material  for  the  new  magazine. 
But  in  all  probability  he  was  the  sole  writer  of  the 
stories  and  chit-chat  criticism  which  made  up  the 
contents  of  what  might  have  been  called  more  prop 
erly  "The  Provincial." 

"Guy  Rivers  "  was  published  toward  the  last  of 
July,  1834,  and  immediately  enjoyed  a  great  run. 
A  London  reprint,  in  three  volumes,  appeared  the 
next  year.  Magazines  and  newspapers  vied  with 
each  other  in  extravagant  praise  of  the  new  South 
ern  author.  The  "Mirror"  declared  that  at  last 
America  had  produced  a  writer  whose  women  char 
acters  were  not  mere  sticks,  like  those  of  Cooper 
and  Brockden  Brown.  The  "American  Monthly  " 


84  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

made  the  astounding  and  somewhat  enigmatical 
discovery  that,  while  Cooper  and  Scott  were  mere 
novelists  of  matter,  Simms  was  a  novelist  of  mind. 
The  "Knickerbocker"  and  the  "New  England 
Magazine "  followed  suit,  and  it  was  not  until 
December  of  the  same  year  that  the  dull  "Ameri 
can  Quarterly  "  found  courage  enough  to  point  out 
with  some  severity  the  obvious  and  great  faults  of 
a  book  over  which  so  many  people  had  been  raving. 
But  this  voice  of  dissent  did  not  prevent  the  work 
from  passing  through  three  editions  in  little  over  a 
year ;  and  Simms  went  back  to  Charleston  to  begin 
a  new  novel,  with  the  comfortable  feeling  that  his 
bank  account  had  been  increased  by  several  hun 
dred  dollars.  But  in  Charleston  he  still  found  him 
self  a  nobody,  and  he  bitterly  contrasted  the  warmth 
of  the  North  with  the  coldness  of  the  South,  regard 
less  of  the  fact  that  in  the  case  of  prophets  the 
laws  of  temperature  do  not  hold.  Yet  one  old 
Charleston  merchant  thought  enough  of  "Guy 
Rivers  "  and  its  author  to  offer  to  send  the  young 
man  to  Europe  for  study  and  travel,  —  an  offer 
which  Simms 's  sturdy  independence  forced  him  to 
decline,  although  a  visit  to  Europe  had  naturally 
been  one  of  his  dearest  dreams.  He  doubtless 
thought  then  that  he  would  one  day  be  able  to 
gratify  his  desire,  but  the  day  never  came. 

Returning  now  to  "  Guy  Rivers,"  it  may  be  noted 
that  Simms  does  not  seem  to  have  been  without  a 
high  opinion  of  his  own  importance  at  this  period. 
Having  been  disgusted  by  some  of  the  criticisms 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  85 

which  Harpers'  reader  had  bestowed  on  "Martin 
Faber,"  he  made  it  a  condition  to  the  publication 
of  his  new  romance  that  it  should  pass  through  no 
reader's  hands.  It  is  a  pity  that  it  did  not.  If  it 
had,  Simms  would  have  had  fewer  alterations  to 
make  in  his  revised  edition  of  twenty  years  later, 
and  his  besetting  sin  of  hurried  writing  would  have 
been  brought  forcibly  to  his  mind  at  a  very  impor 
tant  juncture.  As  it  was,  the  popular  favor  which 
could  be  commanded  by  a  crude  performance 
tempted  him  to  the  rapid  publication  of  much 
equally  crude  and  often  more  feeble  work. 

No  one  called  "  Guy  Rivers  "  feeble.  In  spite 
of  its  stilted  style  and  its  wooden  characters,  there 
was  a  bustle  and  movement  about  it  that  interested 
an  uncritical  public.  Even  now  one  feels  a  desire 
to  know  what  new  adventures  the  rather  priggish 
young  hero  will  fall  into  and  what  new  villainies 
Guy  Rivers,  the  outlaw,  will  commit.  It  mattered 
little  to  a  public  which  was  soon  to  go  into  raptures 
over  "Norman  Leslie  "  whether  Simms's  aristo 
cratic  hero  and  heroine  really  represented  the  up 
per  classes  of  his  native  State.  That  hero  fell  into 
all  sorts  of  traps  set  by  his  villain  enemy,  barely 
escaped  being  unjustly  hanged  for  murder,  and 
wound  up  by  marrying  his  sweetheart  and  nearly 
breaking  the  heart  of  the  young  girl  of  low  origin 
who  had  saved  his  life  and  fallen  in  love  with  him. 
Surely  here  was  enough  to  interest  a  public  which 
had  grown  rather  tired  of  Cooper's  Indians  and  of 
the  thin  humor  of  Paulding's  pleasant  but  unexcit- 


86  WILLIAM  GILNOEE  SIMMS. 

ing  tales.  Even  Dr.  Bird's  "Calavar,"  orthodox 
and  slightly  dull  romance  though  it  was,  could  be 
read  with  pleasure  for  a  change,  Flint's  "Francis 
Berrian  "  being  long  since  forgotten.  But  was  not 
Georgia  at  the  time  of  the  gold  fever  a  more  Amer 
ican  subject  than  Mexico  even  at  the  time  of  a  higher 
gold  fever?  Undiluted  Americanism  was  what 
many  readers  were  crying  for,  and  they  got  it  in 
"Guy  Rivers;"  excitement,  sentimentality,  bom 
bast  were  what  others  were  crying  for,  and  they  got 
all  three  in  "Guy  Rivers."  What  wonder,  then, 
that  the  book  was  popular?  Would  any  of  these 
readers  smile  over  such  a  sentence  as  "her  lips 
quivered  convulsively,  and  an  unbidden  but  not 
painful  suffusion  overspread  the  warm  brilliance  of 
her  soft  fair  cheeks"?  or  would  they  care  a  straw 
whether  Simms  quoted  Garrick's  lines  on  Quin 
correctly  or  incorrectly?  It  is  even  doubtful 
whether  they  were  disgusted  when  Colleton,  the 
hero,  insisted  that  Lucy  Munro,  the  poor  girl  who 
loved  him  with  a  devotion  which  constitutes  the 
single  element  of  charm  in  the  book,  should  come 
to  live  with  him  and  her  successful  rival,  —  a  prop 
osition,  by  the  way,  which  had  T)een  made  in  a  still 
more  startling  fashion  by  Shelley  to  his  first  wife 
Harriet. 

But,  as  has  been  said,  these  uncritical  readers 
were  right  in  holding  that  the  author  of  "Guy 
Rivers  "  was  a  man  of  ability.  They  were  right  in 
saying  that  he  knew  how  to  tell  a  story  without  al 
lowing  its  interest  to  flag.  They  felt,  moreover, 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  87 

that  he  had  opened  a  new  world  to  them,  —  a 
world  lying  near  their  very  doors  in  that  year  of 
our  Lord  eighteen  hundred  and  thirty-four;  not 
an  old  world  separated  from  them  by  thousands  of 
miles  of  ocean  and  by  centuries  of  time.  They 
preferred  a  South  Carolina  aristocrat  and  slave 
owner  to  a  worn-out  English  lord  ;  and  an  outlaw 
fighting  the  Georgia  militia  in  true  backwoods 
fashion  to  a  robber  baron  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
They  had  no  objection  to  the  author's  building  up 
his  new-world  romance  out  of  the  stock  materials 
of  the  old-world  romancer.  They  took  the  solitary 
horseman,  the  desperate  villain,  the  impeccable 
hero,  the  haughty  highborn  maiden,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  but  they  saw  something  new  in  the  rough 
proceedings  of  the  regulators  with  the  Yankee  ped 
dler,  in  the  conflict  of  the  squatters  with  the  militia, 
in  the  primitive  forms  which  backwoods  justice 
and  religion  had  taken  on.  They  had  found  an 
author,  too,  who  could  describe  in  a  lively  way  the 
wild  and  picturesque  scenery  of  a  virgin  country,  and 
who  was  quite  successful  in  his  delineation  of  strike 
ing  and  original  characters  drawn  from  the  hum 
bler  walks  of  life.  That  he  painted  with  broad 
strokes  was  a  matter  of  no  concern  to  people  who 
had  not  become  accustomed  to  minute  and  almost 
photographic  studies  of  the  life  of  a  narrow  region. 
Little  more  need  be  said  of  this  unequal  produc 
tion.  It  was  destined  to  form  the  first  of  a  series 
of  romances  generally  known  as  Simms's  "border 
romances,"  a  series  which  has  been  reprinted  sev- 


88  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

eral  times,  and  which  is  still  read.  The  same  mer 
its  and  faults  which  are  to  be  found  in  "  Guy  Riv 
ers  "  are  to  be  found  in  them  all,  and  they  will 
therefore  require  hereafter  little  more  than  a  mere 
mention  in  the  order  of  their  publication.  All  are 
successful  in  representing  striking  phases  of  back 
woods  life ;  and  they  give  one  a  better  idea  of  that 
curious  stage  of  existence,  viewed  as  a  whole,  than 
the  contemporary  stories  of  Judge  James  Hall,  or 
of  the  pseudonymous  Sealsfield l  (Karl  Postel). 
Sealsfield,  indeed,  gives  the  humorous  side  of  the 
life  he  is  describing  better  than  Simms  does,  but 
the  latter's  work  is  less  sketchy  and  more  compre 
hensive.  Again,  all  these  romances  are  more  or 
less  readable  on  account  of  their  rapid  movement. 
No  matter  whether  we  like  the  characters  or  not,  we 
cannot  resist  being  carried  along  by  the  action. 
There  is  not  enough  moralizing  or  prosy  descrip 
tion  to  stop  us,  for  we  are  not  too  conscientious  to 
skip.  On  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
these  "border  romances,"  the  scenes  of  which  are 
laid  in  nearly  all  the  Southwestern  States,  are  some 
times  as  rough  in  their  construction  as  the  people 
described  were  in  their  manners  and  customs. 
All  are  marred  by  a  slipshod  style,  by  a  repetition 
of  incidents,  and  by  the  introduction  of  an  unne 
cessary  amount  of  the  horrible  and  the  revolting. 
Some  of  Simms 's  critics  used  to  object  to  the  lavish 

1  Sealsfield  is  said  to  have  copied  whole  pages  from  Guy  Rivers 
in  one  of  his  stories.  This  is  an  exaggeration.  Cf .  The  Courtship 
of  Ralph  Doughby,  Esquire,  chap,  i.,  with  Guy  Rivers,  chap.  vi. 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  89 

oaths  put  in  the  mouths  of  his  characters,  to  which 
he  was  wont  to  reply  that  he  could  not  change  for 
the  better  a  backwoodsman's  vocabulary.  But  he 
might  have  avoided,  at  least,  introducing  brutal 
murders  not  necessary  to  the  action  of  the  story, 
and  he  might  have  remembered  that  a  good  artist 
is  not  called  upon  to  exercise  his  powers  upon  sub 
jects  not  proper  to  his  art,  simply  because  such  sub 
jects  belong  to  the  realm  of  the  real  and  the  natu 
ral.  He  might  have  remembered  that  nobility  is 
that  quality  of  a  romance  which  is  essential  to  its 
permanence;  and  that  the  fact  that  he  was  de 
scribing  accurately  the  life  of  a  people  whom  he 
thoroughly  understood  would  not  alone  preserve 
his  work  for  the  general  reader.  When  all  is  said, 
one  is  forced  to  wish  that  Simms  had  written  fewer 
or  none  of  these  stories,  and  that  he  had  spent  the 
time  thus  saved  in  polishing  the  really  excellent 
historical  romances  which  will  be  discussed  pres 
ently.  But  he  had  to  make  a  living,  and  the  public 
liked  sensational  tales,  so  there  is  great  excuse  for 
him. 

The  "Mirror  "for  August  2,  1834,  announced  to 
its  readers  that  Mr.  Simms,  encouraged  by  the 
brilliant  success  of  "Guy  Rivers,"  had  "already 
commenced  the  plot  of  another  American  novel." 
He  was  not  a  man  to  let  the  grass  grow  under  his 
feet,  and  by  the  spring  of  the  next  year  he  was 
back  in  New  York  with  the  completed  or  nearly 
completed  manuscript  of  what  was  destined  to  be 
the  most  widely  read  of  all  of  his  romances.  We 


90  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

have  already  seen  how  the  early  history  of  Carolina 
had  laid  hold  on  his  imagination ;  it  was  only  nat 
ural,  therefore,  that  having  used  up  most  of  the  ma 
terials  furnished  by  his  juvenile  essays  in  story- 
writing  (for  "Guy  Rivers,"  like  "Martin  Faber," 
was  but  the  elaboration  of  a  tale  begun  in  his  youth), 
he  should  be  tempted  to  give  up  the  role  of  acting 
interpreter  to  murderers  and  outlaws,  and  to  under 
take  the  higher  role  of  revealing  to  the  world, 
through  the  pages  of  an  historical  romance,  the 
wealth  of  beauty  and  charm  hidden  away  in  the 
chronicles  and  traditions  of  his  native  State.  But 
of  these  chronicles  and  traditions  none  were  more 
interesting  than  those  that  told  of  that  great  upris 
ing  of  the  Yemassee  Indians  that  went  so  near  de 
stroying  the  infant  colony.  Already,  as  a  youthful 
poet,  he  had  sung  the  dirge  of  the  last  of  these  brave 
people;  now,  ripened  in  years  and  in  historical 
knowledge,  and  flushed  with  recent  success,  he  de 
termined  to  do  justice  to  the  heroism  of  this  well- 
nigh  forgotten  tribe  and  to  the  bravery  and  reso 
lution  of  the  early  Carolinians,  in  a  romance  which 
could  have  no  more  fitting  title  than  the  name 
which  had  once  struck  terror  into  many  a  heart, 
but  which  was  now  vanished  from  the  earth. 

With  a  rapid  writer  like  Simms  seven  months 
was  ample  time  in  which  to  finish  a  work  of  ordi 
nary  length.  The  stores  of  information  on  which 
he  could  draw  were  unusually  large  for  a  man  of 
his  age.  He  had  not  only  read  deeply  in  the 
printed  and  manuscript  sources  of  his  State's  his- 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  91 

tory,  but  he  had  collected  from  oral  sources  a  fund 
of  legends  and  anecdotes  which  were  carefully 
noted  down  in  a  commonplace  book.  He  had  also 
familiarized  himself  with  the  physical  aspects  of 
the  country  in  which  the  scene  of  his  romance  was 
to  lie;  and  he  had  never  omitted  an  opportunity 
for  studying  Indian  character,  whether  by  means 
of  books,  or  of  personal  observation.  From  the  day 
when  he  saw  scores  of  drunken  and  naked  Creeks 
lying  about  the  streets  of  Mobile,  he  was  thor 
oughly  alive  to  all  their  vices ;  but  from  the  time 
of  his  sojourns  in  both  Creek  and  Cherokee  "Na 
tions,"  he  had  also  been  fully  conscious  of  their 
many  undeniable  virtues.  He  was  not  likely, 
therefore,  to  make  the  mistake  Dr.  Bird  after 
wards  made  in  "Nick  of  the  Woods,"  of  dwelling 
exclusively  on  the  darker  side  of  their  character; 
nor  was  he  likely  to  err  with  Cooper,  if  indeed  that 
can  be  considered  an  error  which  has  given  us  such 
characters  as  Uncas  and  Chingachgook,  in  exag 
gerating  their  good  qualities.  In  short,  he  was  ad 
mirably  equipped  for  the  work  he  had  undertaken 
save  in  one  respect,  —  his  lack  of  an  artist's  power 
of  self-control. 

"The  Yemassee  "  was  issued  in  the  mid-spring  of 
1835.  The  first  edition,  although  twice  as  large  as 
usual,  was  exhausted  in  three  days.  Before  the 
end  of  the  year  it  had  caught  up  with  "  Guy  Riv 
ers,"  and  was  in  its  third  American  and  first  Eng 
lish  edition.  Like  the  latter  romance  it  was  much 
bepraised,  but  a  few  editors  thought  it  necessary  to 


92  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

be  critical  enough  to  let  the  young  writer  see  that 
his  work  was  by  no  means  perfect.  The  "  Amer 
ican  Quarterly,"  in  particular,  though  not  going  to 
the  lengths  it  had  gone  in  the  case  of  "  Guy  Riv 
ers,"  gave  the  author  some  very  wholesome  advice 
which  he  could  well  have  afforded  to  follow. 

In  his  new  romance  Simms  was,  of  course,  fol 
lowing,  afar  off,  in  the  footsteps  of  Scott  and 
Cooper.  Inasmuch  as  there  are  considerable  dif 
ferences  between  these  writers,  his  work  squints 
two  ways.  In  his  description  of  the  brave  and 
handsome  Governor  Craven,  who  mingles  in  dis 
guise  among  the  doughty  frontiersmen,  and,  as 
Captain  Gabriel  Harrison,  foils  Indians  and  pi 
rates,  and  wins  the  love  of  the  fair  Bess  Matthews, 
daughter  of  the  strict  old  Puritan  preacher,  he  is 
undoubtedly  following  Scott.  In  his  description 
of  the  noble  Sanutee,  the  well-beloved  of  the  Ye- 
massees,  and  of  his  wife  Matiwan  and  their  son 
Occonestoga ;  in  his  animated  account  of  the  attack 
on  the  block-house,  and  of  Harrison's  adventures 
in  the  Indian  village,  he  is  as  undoubtedly  follow 
ing  Cooper.  In  his  description  of  trackless  swamp 
and  sluggish  river,  of  the  deadly  serpent  lurking 
in  the  centre  of  luxuriant  groves,  of  the  faithful  slave 
who  will  not  accept  his  freedom,  he  strikes  out  for 
himself,  and  proves  that  he  has  a  right  to  a  distinct 
place  among  American  men  of  letters.  But  when 
he  wearies  his  readers  with  hairbreadth  escapes, 
with  tedious  love-scenes,  and  with  the  affected  hu 
mor  of  very  lack-humorous  characters;  when  he 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  93 

is  careless  in  his  grammar  and  pompous  in  his  dic 
tion,  one  confesses  with  a  sigh  that  it  is  his  own 
fault  that  his  position  as  a  writer  is  not  more  se 
cure.  Yet  it  might  be  more  true  to  say  that  he 
owes  the  place  he  has  to  the  fact  that  he  was  a  pa 
triotic  Southerner,  with  a  keen  eye  for  the  charm 
and  beauty  of  Southern  life  and  character;  and 
that  he  owes  the  fact  that  he  never  rose  to  the  front 
rank,  even  of  his  own  country's  writers,  to  the 
limitations  imposed  upon  him  by  his  Southern  birth. 
It  would  be  tedious  to  detail  the  main  features  of 
the  plot  of  a  story  which  can  be  had  in  a  cheap 
form,  and  which  ought  to  be  read  by  all  conscien 
tious  students  of  American  literature,  as  well  as  by 
those  thousands  of  readers  who  are  daily  devouring 
much  worse  novels.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the 
action  is  fairly  sustained  in  spite  of  certain  tedious 
prosings  on  the  part  of  the  minor  characters,  and 
that  in  the  three  chief  Indian  personages,  Sanutee, 
who  is  the  soul  of  the  uprising  of  his  people,  and 
who  dies  with  them  in  their  defeat,  Matiwan,  his 
wife,  the  loveliest  and  purest  Indian  woman  that  I 
have  met  with  in  fiction,  and  Occonestoga,  their 
unfortunate  son,  Simms  shows  a  power  of  charac 
terization  which  his  earlier  work  did  not  warrant 
his  readers  in  expecting,  and  which  his  subsequent 
work  scarcely  maintained.  One  scene,  indeed, 
between  these  characters  seems  to  call  for  special 
mention.  I  refer  to  the  twenty -fifth  chapter,  in 
which  Occonestoga  is  saved  from  the  evil  demon  of 
his  tribe  by  the  desperate  devotion  of  Matiwan,  his 


94  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

mother.  There  is  a  concentration  of  power  con 
spicuous  in  this  entire  chapter  which  is  hardly  to 
be  found  in  the  pages  of  the  two  American  ro 
mancers  who  are  in  most  respects  Simms's  supe 
riors,  —  Cooper  and  Brockden  Brown.  None  of 
Simms's  work  was  destined  to  display  the  sustained 
energy  that  characterizes  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohi 
cans,"  or  the  weird  intensity  of  power  that  makes 
"Wieland"  memorable.  But  in  this  one  scene  he 
showed  what  he  could  do  in  spite  of  the  defects  of 
his  Southern  qualities.  Yet,  although  the  defense 
of  the  block-house  and  the  charming  of  Bess  Mat 
thews  by  the  rattlesnake  have  been  made  fairly  fa 
miliar  by  school  readers  and  volumes  of  selections, 
this  admirable  scene  has  been  passed  over  in  al 
most  complete  silence. 

The  success  of  "The  Yemassee "  naturally 
prompted  Simms  to  attempt  another  historical 
romance,  and  the  example  of  Kennedy's  "Horse- 
Shoe  Kobinson,"  besides  his  own  interest  in  the 
period,  was  enough  to  determine  him  to  lay  the 
scene  of  his  next  volume  in  the  troublous  times  of 
the  Revolution.  Accordingly,  "The  Southern 
Literary  Messenger  "  for  August,  1835,  announced 
that  he  would  soon  be  delivered  of  a  new  romance, 
and  late  in  the  same  year  The  "Partisan"  was 
published.  But  as  "The  Partisan"  was  intended 
to  form  the  first  number  of  a  trilogy,  and  as  this 
chapter  is  getting  rather  long,  it  will  be  proper  to 
postpone  for  a  space  the  discussion  of  its  merits. 

Simms's  vocation  has  now  been  found,  but  it 


A  VOCATION  FOUND.  95 

will  not  be  well  to  close  this  chapter  without  re 
ferring  to  his  second  marriage.  It  can  be  seen 
from  a  notice  prefixed  to  "  The  Partisan,"  that  on 
July  1,  1835,  its  author  was  at  Barnwell,  South 
Carolina.  Now  not  many  miles  distant  from  that 
place  was  a  plantation  called  Woodlands,  whereat 
resided  a  certain  Mr.  Nash  Roach  and  his  only 
daughter  Chevillette.  It  is  to  be  shrewdly  sus 
pected  that  Mr.  Simms  had  some  other  business 
at  Barnwell  than  writing  romances;  for  on  No 
vember  18th  of  the  following  year,  he  wrote  to  his 
friend  Lawson  that  he  was  once  more  happily  mar 
ried,  and  to  this  very  Miss  Chevillette  Roach.  A 
description  of  this  lady  and  her  father,  and  of  the 
life  Simms  was  destined  to  lead  at  their  pleasant 
plantation,  will  form  a  fitting  introduction  to  a 
new  chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

A   PROLIFIC   ROMANCER. 

MR.  NASH  ROACH,  the  father  of  Simms's  second 
wife,  was  a  well-to-do  gentleman  of  English  extrac 
tion.  His  father  had  emigrated  from  Bristol  to 
Charleston,  and  had  laid  the  foundations  of  a 
considerable  fortune,  which  the  son  had  probably 
increased,  for  Woodlands  was  not  his  only  plan 
tation.  Mr.  Roach  was  about  forty-four  at  the 
time  of  his  daughter's  marriage,  and  a  widower. 
His  wife  is  said  to  have  been  the  child  of  a  Colonel 
Chevillette,  one  of  Frederick  the  Great's  soldiers; 
certainly  it  was  Mrs.  Simms's  pride  to  show  to  her 
visitors  letters  from  that  monarch  to  her  grandfa 
ther,  strongly  encouraging  the  culture  of  the  grape 
in  South  Carolina.  Of  Mrs.  Simms  herself  little 
can  be  learned,  save  that  she  was  an  admirable 
mother  and  stepmother,  and  that  all  who  knew  her 
were  fond  of  her.  She  was  doubtless  an  excellent 
example  of  that  charming  type  of  the  affectionate 
and  domestic  woman  which  it  has  been  the  good 
fortune  of  the  South  to  produce  in  all  periods  of  its 
existence. 

Those  of  Simms's  numerous  visitors  at  Wood 
lands,  who  have  recorded  their  impressions,  have 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCES.  97 

said  little  of  Mr.  Roach  and  his  daughter,  but 
enough  of  the  house  and  of  its  quasi  owner  —  for 
Mr.  Roach  gave  Simms  carte  blanche  in  the  matter 
of  entertaining,  and  grew  to  depend  upon  him  in  all 
things  as  the  years  went  by  —  to  enable  us  to  form 
a  fair  conception  of  the  conditions  under  which  most 
of  our  author's  future  work  was  done.  Of  these 
visitors  the  most  conspicuous  were  William  Cullen 
Bryant,  G.  P.  R.  James,  John  R.  Thompson,  and 
Paul  Hayne.  But  though  this  list  is  small,  the 
number  of  visitors  was  large,  for  hardly  any  North 
ern  gentleman  who  could  get  an  introduction,  or 
of  whose  coming  South  Simms  could  hear,  failed 
to  stop  at  Woodlands,  to  pay  his  respects.  The 
plantation  was  within  easy  walking  distance  —  but 
what  expected  guest  would  be  allowed  to  walk  even 
a  hundred  yards  to  a  Southerner's  house?  —  of 
Midway,  a  station  which,  as  its  name  implied,  was 
the  half-way  stop  between  Charleston  and  Augusta. 
Hence  visitors  found  it  accessible,  and  as  Simms 
was  known  far  and  wide  for  his  hospitality, 
Woodlands  was  seldom  without  a  guest. 

The  house  itself  was  a  large  and  comfortable 
brick  building,  with  an  odd-looking  portico  in  front 
spacious  enough  to  allow  Simms  to  promenade  in 
bad  weather.  One  of  the  largest  rooms  on  the  lower 
floor  was  reserved  for  the  library  and  study,  and 
here  most  of  the  romances  to  be  mentioned  in  this 
chapter  were  written.  The  library  was  well  chosen, 
and  at  the  time  of  the  war  numbered  about  ten 
thousand  volumes,  —  a  very  large  library  for  the 


98  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

South.  Simms  was  a  born  reader  and  a  book 
fancier,  but  many  of  his  books  came  from  pub 
lishers  who  desired  to  secure  a  notice  from  his 
pen.  The  dining  room,  that  very  important  part 
of  a  Southerner's  house,  was  in  close  proximity  to 
the  study,  and  thither  Simms  and  his  guests  were 
wont  to  repair  before  the  early  dinner,  in  order  to 
mix  a  toddy.  The  toddy  disposed  of,  they  sat 
down  to  a  table  loaded  with  good  things,  most  of 
which  came  from  the  plantation  or  from  the  neigh 
boring  river,  the  Edisto.  Over  this  table  Simms 
presided  with  a  hearty  hospitality.  He  let  his 
guests  eat  while  he  himself  told  anecdote  after  an 
ecdote,  taking  off  "the  peculiar  dialect  and  tones 
of  the  various  characters  introduced,  whether  sand- 
lapper,  backwoodsman,  half-breed,  or  negro." 
Sometimes  he  declaimed  his  own  poetiy  or  that  of 
others;  sometimes  he  discoursed  on  topics  of  liter 
ature  or  art  with  a  vehemence  and  insistence  which 
left  his  guests  little  room  to  get  in  a  word.  Some 
afterwards  revenged  themselves  by  saying  that 
Simms  could  declaim  only,  not  converse;  but  his 
friends  excused  him,  and  compared  him  to  Dr. 
Johnson. 

Dinner  over,  cigars  were  produced,  although 
Simms  himself  did  not  begin  to  smoke  until  after 
he  was  forty.  He  had  promised  his  father  not  to 
use  tobacco,  and  he  began  its  use  only  in  order  to 
counteract  a  tendency  to  corpulency.  Smoking 
being  ended,  guests  were  at  liberty  to  take  a  nap, 
or  to  drive,  ride,  or  walk  through  the  picturesque 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  99 

neighborhood.  The  Northerners  generally  went 
first  to  the  quarters,  to  satisfy  their  curiosity  with 
regard  to  the  South' s  peculiar  institution.  They 
found  about  sixty  or  seventy  slaves  living  by  fam 
ilies  in  comfortable  cabins,  each  with  a  plot  of 
ground  on  which  the  occupants  could  raise  poultry 
and  vegetables.  These  productions  were  after 
wards  sold  to  Simms  or  Mr.  Roach  for  prices  which 
seem  to  have  astonished  one  frugal  visitor  (Law- 
son).  This  same  guest  saw  one  negro  man  who 
had  just  returned  from  consulting  a  physician  in 
Charleston,  Simms,  of  course,  having  paid  the  cost 
of  the  trip.  If  it  happened  to  be  Christmas  time, 
the  guest  was  likely  to  be  awakened  early  by  the 
sound  of  sweet  singing,  blended  with  tones  from 
numerous  banjos;  and  if  he  had  arisen  he  would 
have  seen  Simms,  though  the  latter,  being  a  late 
worker,  was  no  early  riser,  standing  in  the  porch 
distributing  all  sorts  of  presents  to  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  grinning  and  grateful  darkies.  And 
unless  he  were  a  thinker  not  easily  misled  by 
appearances,  he  might  have  gone  back  to  bed 
with  the  conviction  that  slavery  was  after  all  not 
such  a  bad  institution.  So,  at  least,  declared 
one  Northern  visitor  in  a  letter  that  has  been 
preserved.  But  although  slavery  at  Woodlands 
was  as  harmless  as  it  could  be  anywhere,  a 
thoughtful  man  like  Bryant,  though  fully  recog 
nizing  the  kindly  treatment  his  friend's  slaves 
received,  could  find  no  reason  to  change  his  anti- 
slavery  principles. 


100  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

The  quarters  having  been  visited,  the  guest  could 
take  a  ride  through  majestic  forests  of  oaks  or 
pines  along  bridle  paths  of  hard  white  sand.  He 
would  pass  by  fields  of  cotton  or  maize,  or  by 
swamps  filled  with  cypresses,  at  whose  roots  the  al 
ligator  reposed.  If  he  knew  anything  of  his  host's 
poetry  he  would  recall  "The  Edge  of  the  Swamp," 
and  think  that  Simms  had  described  the  uncanny 
place  with  some  little  power.  A  boat  horn  might 
remind  him  that  this  was  the  season  when  the  lum 
bermen  went  down  the  Edisto  on  their  rafts,  and 
he  might  ride  on  to  see  them  pass  by;  or,  if  he 
were  a  fisherman,  he  might  go  to  select  a  proper 
spot  for  angling,  on  the  morrow,  for  the  famous 
Edisto  "cat."  In  short,  there  was  much  for  a 
horseman  to  explore,  and  he  would  not,  in  all  prob 
ability,  have  thought  of  the  loneliness  of  the  neigh 
borhood. 

If,  however,  the  guest  were,  like  his  host,  not 
much  inclined  to  take  exercise,  he  could  find  plenty 
to  interest  him  in  the  grounds  immediately  sur 
rounding  the  house.  He  could  admire  Simms's 
taste  as  a  landscape  gardener,  or  he  could  take  his 
book  and  go  out  for  a  seat  in  the  grape-vine  swing, 
which  his  host  had  celebrated  in  a  song.  A  won 
derful  swing  he  would  have  found  it,  for  the  vine 
had  drooped  its  festoons,  one  below  another,  in  such 
a  way  that  half  a  dozen  persons  (so  says  an  appar 
ently  veracious  traveler)  could  find  a  comfortable 
seat,  and  yet  not  one  of  them  be  sitting  on  a  level 
with  his  neighbor,  nay,  could  not  only  sit,  but  could 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  .  101 

hold  a  book  in  one  hand  and  reach  ripe  grapes  with 
the  other. 

But  enough  for  the  present  of  the  charms  of 
Woodlands  during  the  fall  and  winter  months. 
In  summer  the  place  was  untenantable,  but  that 
was  the  very  time  that  Simms  liked  to  visit  Charles 
ton  and  the  North.  At  Woodlands  he  could  live 
with  safety  from  October  to  May,  and  there  he 
could  write  his  books  and  see  his  friends.  Not 
being  primarily  a  planter,  he  could  sit  up  late  in 
his  study  and  then  take  his  time  about  rising. 
But  when  he  did  rise,  he  went  straight  to  work  at 
his  desk,  and  wrote  with  unceasing  rapidity  until 
dinner  time.  Visitors  were  told  to  scour  the  coun 
try,  go  hunting  or  fishing,  or  else  pass  the  time 
with  a  book  or  a  cigar ;  Simms  himself  must  finish 
thirty  pages  of  manuscript  in  the  morning,  or  else 
make  it  up  at  night,  in  addition  to  his  heavy  cor 
respondence.  If  the  visitor  sat  quiet,  as  Paul 
Hayne  was  wont  to  do,  watching  the  rapid  pen 
move  over  the  sheets  until  Simms  exclaimed,  "  Near 
dinner  time,  old  boy,  —  what  say  you  to  a  glass  of 
sherry  and  bitters?"  then  it  was  likely  that  the 
study  would  be  abandoned  for  the  rest  of  the  day, 
and  that  after  supper  would  come  a  rubber  of  whist, 
or  a  long  conversation  on  the  portico  about  litera 
ture  or  metaphysics, — a  subject  in  which  Simms 
liked  to  dabble,  with  how  much  success  no  one  will 
now  determine.  But  this  life,  however  charming, 
was  not  Simms 's  whole  life,  and  it  must  be  left  for 
other  things. 


102  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

In  our  eagerness  to  get  Mr.  Simms  married  be 
fore  finishing  our  last  chapter,  we  were  compelled 
to  pass  over  a  space  of  fourteen  months  of  consid 
erable  literary  activity.  Now  that  we  have  him 
quietly  settled  at  Woodlands,  it  will  be  well  to 
retrace  our  steps  and  recover  the  lost  trail  of  the 
author.  It  has  been  stated  that  after  the  great 
success  of  "The  Yemassee"  Simms  went  to  work 
with  redoubled  energy  on  another  historical  ro 
mance,  "The  Partisan,"  which  was  published  in 
the  fall  of  1835.  A  year  later  he  was  again  in 
New  York  with  another  revolutionary  romance,  the 
second  in  his  proposed  series  of  three,  entitled 
"Mellichampe:  a  Legend  of  the  Santee."  After 
revising  the  proof  sheets  of  this  last  production,  he 
went  to  South  Carolina,  and  was  married. 

In  addition  to  this  work  he  became  the  chief  con 
tributor  to  a  new  publication  that  aspired  to  repre 
sent  the  literary  talent  of  Charleston.  This  was 
the  "Southern  Literary  Journal,"  a  small  monthly 
magazine  which  was  begun  in  September,  1835, 
under  the  editorship  of  a  certain  Daniel  K.  Whit- 
aker,  a  New  Englander  by  birth,  but  connected  with 
the  South  by  a  long,  though  inconspicuous  literary 
career.  Simms  does  not  seem  to  have  liked  Whit- 
aker  personally,  an  unusual  fact  in  his  case,  but 
this  could  not  keep  him  from  aiding  an  enterprise 
that  promised  to  develop  Southern  literature.  But 
Charleston  was  destined  to  be  a  graveyard  for  mag 
azines,  and  Simms  alone  could  not  keep  one  going, 
or  counteract  the  deadly  effects  of  the  sentimental 


A  PEOLIFIC  ROMANCER.  103 

poetry  showered  upon  Whitaker  by  local  scribblers. 
Sooth  to  say,  his  own  contributions  seem  to  have 
been  the  offscourings  of  his  desk,  and  in  many  re 
spects  worthy  of  the  company  they  had  to  keep. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to  learn  that  by  the 
spring  of  1839  the  "Southern  Literary  Journal " 
had  ceased  to  exist. 

There  was  another  reason  for  its  demise.  The 
South  could  not  possibly  support  more  than  one 
respectable  magazine,  and  that  one  had  already 
been  begun  at  Richmond  by  Thomas  W.  White,  in 
August,  1834.  At  the  very  time  Whitaker  began 
his  publication,  the  "Southern  Literary  Messen 
ger  "  was  being  edited  by  the  ablest  man  of  letters 
of  whom  the  South,  with  not  an  absolutely  perfect 
claim,  could  boast,  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Poe  soon 
gave  his  journal  a  position  which  enabled  it  to 
drag  on  a  weary  existence  long  after  he  himself  and 
White,  the  founder,  had  relinquished  all  interest  in 
it,  the  one  on  account  of  his  bad  habits,  the  other 
on  account  of  death.  Under  John  R.  Thompson 
and  with  the  support  of  men  like  Simms,  the  two 
Cookes  (Philip  Pendleton,  the  author  of  "Florence 
Vane,"  and  John  Esten,  the  novelist)  Paul  Hayne, 
and  others,  the  "Messenger"  was  destined  to  oc 
cupy  for  a  few  short  years  a  position,  not  indeed 
equal  to  that  which  it  occupied  under  Poe's  editor 
ship,  but  still  a  respectable  position.  Thompson 
had  a  faculty  of  singling  out  young  writers  of  prom 
ise,  and  Donald  G.  Mitchell  and  Thomas  Bailey 
Aldrich  are  two  living  authors,  some  of  whose 


104  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

youthful  effusions  first  saw  the  light  in  the  "Mes 
senger."  But  except  for  these  two  short  periods 
it  cannot  be  said  that  the  Richmond  monthly  did  a 
great  deal  for  Southern  literature.  It  is  true  that 
in  some  respects  it  stands  a  fair  comparison  with 
Northern  publications  like  the  "Knickerbocker" 
and  "Graham's,"  all  being  on  the  whole  respect 
ably  dull;  but  there  is  more  of  the  appearance 
of  a  struggle  for  even  a  dull  existence  visible  in 
the  Southern  magazine.  The  poetry  is  as  a  rule 
deadly.  The  prose  fiction  is  scarcely  better,  except 
for  some  passable  tales  by  that  engaging  personage 
the  elder  Cooke,  and  there  is  constant  evidence  of 
padding  in  the  frequent  appearance  of  lectures 
delivered  by  professors  to  their  classes  and  of  ora 
tions  spoken  at  the  commencement  exercises  of 
young  ladies'  seminaries.  It  could  not  have  been 
otherwise.  The  Southern  people  were  not  great 
readers,  and  when  they  did  read  they  preferred 
Northern  publications.  The  editors  of  these  could 
pay  for  contributions,  and  even  patriotic  South 
erners  like  Simms  sent  their  best  work  to  them, 
—  for  authors  cannot  live  on  patriotism  alone. 
Northern  prices  for  work  were  by  no  means  high, 
but  Thompson  recognized  the  fact  that  he  could 
not  give  as  much,  and  he  therefore  considerately 
forebore  to  press  Simms  for  contributions,  although 
giatefully  accepting  what  could  not  well  be  pub 
lished  elsewhere.  Perhaps  a  careful  study  of  the 
thirty  odd  volumes  of  this  often  praised  journal 
till  give  one  as  fair  an  idea  of  the  thin  quality  of 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  105 

ante-bellum  Southern  literature  as  can  be  got  from 
any  one  source.  During  the  former  half  of  its  ex 
istence  it  does  not  compare  as  unfavorably  with 
Northern  magazines  as  during  the  latter  half,  which 
is  precisely  what  we  should  expect  when  we  remem 
ber  that  freedom  elevates,  while  slavery  either  keeps 
at  one  level,  or  lowers.  It  was  fitting  that  it  should 
perish  during  the  throes  of  the  war  that  finally 
destroyed  slavery;  and  it  remains  an  admirable 
source  of  information  for  the  laborious  student  of 
Southern  life  and  manners. 

But  Simms  in  1835  could  not  foresee  all  this, 
and  he  cordially  lent  his  support  to  the  "Messen* 
ger."  He  not  only  sent  poems,  some  new  and 
some  old,  but  he  paid  his  five-dollar  subscription 
and  had  his  name  printed  in  the  roll  of  honor  on 
the  cover  of  the  magazine.  After  Poe  resigned  his 
editorship,  another  notice  appeared  on  the  cover 
announcing  that  Mr.  William  Gilmore  Simms  was 
not  the  editor.  Northern  readers  knowing  of  only 
two  Southern  writers,  naturally  supposed  that  when 
Poe  resigned,  Simms  had  to  step  in. 

But  enough  has  been  said  of  these  attempts  to 
create  a  sectional  literature  and  of  their  failure; 
let  us  turn  to  the  works  in  which  Simms  did  lay  a 
foundation  for  Southern  literature  by  following 
out  the  universal,  not  sectional,  principle  of  liter 
ary  art  which  requires  that  a  man  should  write 
spontaneously  and  simply  about  those  things  he  is 
fullest  of  and  best  understands.  In  the  case  of 
most  men  this  means  that  they  must  write  of  what 


106  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

lies  near  their  very  doors,  and  so  a  literature  may 
be  produced  which  is  in  this  sense,  sectional.  But 
no  nation  or  section  will  ever  get  a  literature  by 
shrieking  for  the  "national"  and  the  "sectional" 
and  not  praying  for  the  true  and  the  beautiful. 

That  Simms  did  not  pray  enough  for  the  true 
and  the  beautiful  while  writing  "The  Partisan  "  is 
evident  from  the  bald  passages  in  which  he  forgets 
that  he  is  a  romancer  and  fancies  himself  an  histo 
rian  of  the  Revolution  in  Carolina,  —  notably  from 
the  passage  preliminary  to  his  description  of  the 
battle  of  Camden,  in  which  he  gives  in  extenso 
Gates's  special  orders  to  the  army.  But  on  the 
whole  it  is  easy  to  see  that  he  wrote  "The  Partisan  " 
because  his  mind  was  full  of  Marion  and  his  ragged 
troopers,  of  brave  deeds  done  by  lowly  men,  of 
midnight  sallies  from  camps  hidden  in  the  depths 
of  a  swamp,  of  Tarleton  and  his  ruthless  dragoons, 
—  in  short,  of  war  in  all  its  picturesqueness  and  all 
its  horror.  He  had  studied  the  chronicles  of  that 
stirring  time,  had  read  Marion's  own  letters,  had 
conversed  with  old  men  who  had  served  under  "  the 
Swamp  Fox,"  and  had  walked  or  ridden  over  all 
the  spots  that  their  bravery  had  consecrated.  It 
was  because  he  tried  to  charm  his  readers  with  a 
true  picture  of  men  and  times  that  had  charmed 
himself  that  he  succeeded  in  spite  of  his  many 
shortcomings  in  making  "The  Partisan  "a  delight 
ful  romance. 

The  scene  of  "The  Partisan"  is  laid  in  and 
around  the  once  prosperous,  but  in  1835  utterly 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  107 

decayed  town  of  Dorchester.  Simms,  as  he  tells 
us  in  the  preface  to  his  revised  edition,  had  spent 
part  of  a  summer  (perhaps  that  of  1834)  in  its 
neighborhood,  and  had  taken  occasion  to  revisit  its 
ruins.  As  a  boy  he  had  frequently  rambled  over 
the  spot,  and  had  listened  to  its  traditions  from  the 
lips  of  some  old  inhabitant  whose  name  has  not 
been  recorded.  Now  as  he  wandered  about,  look 
ing  at  dismantled  fort  and  neglected  church  and 
vacant  sites  of  once  happy  dwellings,  these  tradi 
tions  came  back  to  him.  In  his  imagination  he 
peopled  the  streets  once  more.  The  British  flag 
was  again  flying  over  the  fort,  the  blare  of  the 
bugle  was  heard,  and  Marion's  men  emerged  from 
a  neighboring  swamp  and  came  thundering  through 
the  village  up  to  the  gates  of  the  stronghold.  Here 
was  material  enough  for  a  story ;  but  as  he  re 
volved  the  matter  in  his  mind,  he  became  convinced 
that  more  than  one  romance  would  be  required  if 
he  proposed  to  give  the  world  a  fairly  complete  pic 
ture  of  Carolina  during  the  times  of  partisan  war 
fare.  Whether  he  knew  that  another  Southern 
author  was  preparing  to  publish  a  romance  on  a 
similar  theme  cannot  be  absolutely  determined,  but, 
at  any  rate,  he  must  have  felt  that  it  would  be  his 
own  fault  if  he  did  not  prove  himself  to  be  a  fair 
rival  for  Kennedy.  When  he  read  "Horse-Shoe 
Robinson,"  he  probably  concluded  that  even  if  it 
contained  fewer  faults  of  style  than  "The  Parti 
san,"  it  was  much  too  leisurely  a  book  for  the  ex 
citing  period  in  which  its  scene  was  laid,  and  that, 


108  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

in  spite  of  all  the  critics  could  urge  against  the  in 
equalities  of  "The  Partisan,"  that  romance  gave 
a  better  insight  into  the  character  of  the  Revolution 
in  the-  South  than  the  more  elaborate  and  ortho 
dox  production  of  the  elder  and  not  to  the  manor 
born  romancer. 

He  was  convinced,  then,  that  "The  Partisan  "  and 
"Horse- Shoe  Robinson"  did  not  exhaust  the  sub 
ject,  and  more  than  this  he  was  so  pleased  with  the 
characters  he  had  called  to  life  to  people  the  streets 
of  old  Dorchester  that  he  could  not  bear  to  kill 
them  off  or  get  them  happily  married  within  the 
compass  of  one  romance.  He  accordingly  formed 
the  plan  of  writing  a  trilogy,  each  member  of 
which  should,  however,  form  a  fairly  complete 
story.  He  did  not  succeed  in  this,  for  "Melli- 
champe,"  as  he  himself  afterwards  confessed,  has 
only  an  episodical  connection  with  "The  Parti 
san,"  and  with  the  real  sequel  of  that  romance, 
"Katharine  Walton."  Perhaps  this  was  the  rea 
son  that  made  him  wait  thirteen  years  before  writ 
ing  the  last  mentioned  book.  But  whether  he 
succeeded  in  his  elaborate  plan  or  not,  he  did  not 
cease  to  write  revolutionary  romances,  or  to  con 
tinue  the  adventures  of  his  favorite  characters 
from  book  to  book,  and  the  reader  is  perhaps  just 
as  well  satisfied  with  the  result.  For  although  his 
plots  are  always  interesting  and  full  of  action, 
Simms  displayed  no  great  art  in  the  construction  of 
his  romances,  and  his  deficiencies  in  this  regard 
would  have  been  more  striking  if  he  had  really 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  109 

attempted  to  construct  a  series  of  romances  that 
should  form  an  organic  whole. 

Space  is  wanting  to  describe  "The  Partisan"  in 
detail.  None  of  the  characters  can  be  called  fas 
cinating  unless  it  be  Lieutenant  Porgy,  whom  most 
critics,  including  Poe,  have  regarded  as  a  vulgar 
copy  of  Falstaff.  To  this  verdict  I  do  not  sub 
scribe.  Simms  said  that  Porgy  was  a  transcript 
from  real  life,  and  I  have  it  on  good  authority  that 
he  intended  Porgy  to  be  a  reproduction  of  himself 
in  certain  moods.  Porgy  is  in  many  respects  a 
typical  Southerner,  brave,  high  talking,  careless  in 
money  matters  and  as  generous  as  careless,  fond  of 
good  living,  and  last,  but  not  least,  too  frequently 
inclined  to  take  his  own  commonplaces  as  the  utter 
ances  of  inspired  wisdom.  It  cannot  be  denied  that 
Simms  at  times  overdraws  this  favorite  character, 
who  is  introduced  in  many  succeeding  volumes. 
But  he  is  better  drawn  than  most  of  the  high-born 
gentlemen  that  figure  in  Simms's  romances.  Simms 
always  succeeded  best  in  his  characters  drawn  from 
the  humbler  walks  of  life,  because  he  had  studied 
their  ways  too  thoroughly  in  his  border  journeys 
not  to  be  able  to  make  them  live  in  his  pages. 
With  his  better-born  characters  he  failed,  partly 
because  such  characters  do  not  easily  permit  them 
selves  to  be  studied,  partly  because  in  drawing  them 
he  was  naturally  influenced  by  his  recollection  of 
similar  characters  in  the  numerous  romances  he  had 
read. 

The  charm  of  "The  Partisan  "  lies  in  its  action 


110  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

and  in  its  descriptions.  Few  of  its  readers  are 
likely  to  forget  the  terrible  storm  that  overtook 
Major  Singleton,  the  hero,  in  the  forest;  fewer 
still  will  forget  the  rescue  of  Colonel  Walton  by 
Marion's  gallant  troopers.  Being  from  beginning 
to  end  a  story  of  adventure,  it  is  naturally  a  boy's 
book,  but  there  is  sufficient  charm  and  power  dis 
played  to  interest  an  older  reader.  It  is  true  that 
for  the  sake  of  these  merits  many  faults  must  be 
pardoned,  of  which  careless  grammar  and  unne 
cessary  moralizing  are  unfortunately  not  the  least. 
As  in  the  case  of  the  border  romances,  there  are 
murders  which  either  should  not  have  been  com 
mitted,  or  else  should  have  been  described  in  a  less 
horrible  way.  There  is  an  absurd  lugging  in  of 
historical  details  and  an  unfortunate  proneness  to 
paint  every  Englishman  and  Tory  in  the  darkest 
colors ;  there  is  an  unnecessary  amount  of  pompous 
diction  and  of  stilted  conversation,  —  but  when 
all  is  said,  "The  Partisan"  remains  a  striking  ro 
mance,  not  indeed  worthy  to  be  placed  on  a  level 
with  "The  Spy,"  but  certainly  superior  to  most  of 
the  early  efforts  of  American  romancers. 

But  how  could  a  story  written  as  "The  Parti 
san  "  and  too  many  of  Simms's  other  works  were 
written,  escape  being  full  of  faults?  When  he 
went  to  New  York  to  arrange  with  his  publishers, 
he  had  completed  only  part  of  his  manuscript. 
The  printers  were  set  to  work  immediately,  and 
soon  caught  up  with  him.  But  the  young  man 
wanted  a  holiday,  and  went  to  inform  the  Harpers 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  Ill 

that  he  would  be  out  of  town  for  a  week.  'JBut," 
said  Mr.  James  Harper,  "we  are  out  of  copy,  and 
unless  you  can  furnish  more,  we  shall  have  to  sus 
pend  work  on  your  novel  until  you  return. "  "  That 
will  never  do,"  replied  the  author,  "give  me  pen, 
ink,  and  paper,  and  I  '11  go  upstairs  and  find  a 
place  to  write."  In  less  than  half  an  hour  he  came 
down  again  with  more  manuscript  than  would  be 
required  during  his  absence.  This  sounds  marvel 
ous,  or  else  New  York  printers  in  1835  were  not 
rapid  workers,  but  such  was  the  story  which  Mr. 
James  Harper  told  in  after  years  to  a  great  ad 
mirer  of  Simms.  He  added,  and  we  must  perforce 
agree  with  him,  that  Simms  had  the  most  remark 
able  talent  for  writing  he  had  ever  known.  But 
could  any  talent  neutralize  the  effects  of  such 
methods  of  composition? 

A  very  few  words  will  suffice  for  "Mellichampe," 
the  romance  that  followed  "The  Partisan."  In 
some  respects  it  is  a  more  even  production  than  its 
predecessor,  but  it  does  not  leave  as  distinct  an  im 
pression  upon  the  reader.  It  is  redeemed  only  by 
the  character  of  the  scout  who  follows  Mellichampe, 
the  priggish  young  hero,  like  a  faithful  hound,  and 
finally  dies  for  him.  Witherspoon,  or  "Thumb 
screw"  as  his  companions  call  him,  is  a  character 
worthy  of  Cooper.  He  is  not,  perhaps,  as  re 
markable  a  scout  as  some  that  Simms  afterwards 
drew,  —  the  peculiar  features  of  the  "low  country  " 
of  South  Carolina  make  Simms's  scouts  a  distinct 
variety,  —  but  he  is  what  is  better,  a  noble  man. 


112  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

The  chapter  that  describes  his  death  shows  that 
Simms  for  once  in  his  life  was  able  to  be  genuinely 
pathetic. 

After  his  honeymoon  was  over,  our  now  popular 
author  had  abundant  leisure  to  lay  his  plans  for 
new  literary  work.  Although  his  latest  romances 
had  been  quite  successful  in  the  North,  his  Caro 
lina  friends  could  not  bring  themselves  to  believe 
that  an  author  of  his  powers  should  waste  his  time 
on  such  trivial  subjects  as  the  legends  and  tradi 
tions  of  a  country  not  two  hundred  years  old. 
They  urged  him  to  try  a  more  ancient  and  foreign 
and,  therefore,  more  dignified  theme.  Their  ad 
vice  was  seconded  by  his  own  restlessness,  and  so 
"Katharine  Walton  "  was  dismissed  for  the  nonce, 
and  "Pelayo;  a  Story  of  the  Goth"  was  rapidly 
ground  out.  Simms  had  always  been  fascinated  by 
the  romantic  history  of  Spain,  and  the  casual  discov 
ery  of  the  manuscript  of  his  youthful  play  on  the 
fortunes  of  Roderick  was  sufficient  incitement  to 
carry  him  through  the  two  volumes  of  "Pelayo" 
and  well  on  to  the  completion  of  its  sequel,  "  Count 
Julian."  Perhaps  another  reason  for  his  choice  of 
a  foreign  theme  was  a  desire  to  succeed  where  his 
great  forerunner,  Cooper,  had  confessedly  failed. 

But,  as  if  to  show  him  that  he  had  made  a  mis 
take,  bad  fortune  attended  both  his  new  ventures. 
Owing  to  the  general  depression  of  business,  the 
Harpers  did  not  publish  "Pelayo  "until  the  autumn 
of  1838 ;  and  the  first  five  books  of  "  Count  Julian  " 
which  were  sent  on,  probably  to  the  same  publish- 


A  PEOLIFIC  ROMANCER.  113 

ers,  went  astray  through  the  carelessness  of  the 
person  that  had  charge  of  them,  and  did  not  turn 
up  again  for  two  years.  By  this  last  incident  we 
are  reminded  of  one  of  the  chief  difficulties  South 
ern  authors  had  to  encounter.  Unless  they  could 
carry  their  manuscripts  in  person  to  their  publish 
ers,  they  ran  constant  risk  of  having  them  lost,  and 
proof-reading  at  home  was  almost  an  impossibility. 
Even  as  late  as  1850,  articles  addressed  to  Simms 
as  editor  of  the  "  Southern  Quarterly  Review  "  were 
continually  being  lost ;  and  when  our  South  Caroli 
nian  author  wished  to  compliment  a  brother  man  of 
letters  in  Virginia  (Beverley  Tucker)  with  a  set  of 
his  works,  he  was  compelled  to  send  the  books  to 
Richmond  via  Baltimore,  — -  a  proceeding  which 
resulted  in  their  detention  in  the  latter  city  for 
several  weeks.  Simms,  as  we  have  seen,  generally 
managed  to  get  to  New  York  once  a  year  to  super 
intend  the  publication  of  his  own  books,  —  one  is 
forced  to  wish  that  he  had  not  gone  so  often,  —  but 
most  Southern  aspirants  for  literary  fame  were 
poor,  and  were  easily  tempted  to  give  up  after  they 
learned  of  the  difficulties  that  lay  before  them. 
Sometimes  they  tried  local  publishers,  and  were 
made  to  say  fearful  and  wonderful  things  by  the 
printers ;  but  as  a  rule  they  contented  themselves 
with  writing  to  Simms,  and  asking  him,  as  the 
representative  Southern  man  of  letters,  with,  of 
course,  plenty  of  time  to  spare,  to  get  them  pub 
lishers  for  their  lucubrations.  After  a  kindly  an 
swer  from  Simms,  telling  them  that  they  must  help 


114  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

themselves,  they  went  to  their  graves  as  so  many 
"mute,  inglorious  Miltons"had  gone  before.  It 
must  be  added  that  Simms's  kindly,  genial  nature 
never  shone  forth  more  clearly  than  in  his  treat 
ment  of  these  well-meaning  but  pestering  corre 
spondents. 

But  whatever  hopes  our  author  may  have  had 
of  his  Spanish  romances  were  destined  to  be  disap 
pointed.  "Pelayo  "  did  not  make  a  hit,  and  when 
in  1845  "Count  Julian"  was  finished  and  pub 
lished,  Simms  confessed,  in  his  dedication  to  Ken 
nedy,  that  he  had  made  a  mistake  in  abandoning 
the  rich  field  his  State  and  section  had  afforded  him. 
With  this  mature  judgment  of  the  author  himself 
we  may  well  rest  content.  Both  romances  are  read 
able,  when  one  is  in  a  charitable  mood,  and  each 
has  an  occasional  passage  or  scene  of  some  power. 
But  there  was  no  excuse  for  their  publication,  ex 
cept  the  perennial  one,  ilfaut  vivre. 

This  same  plea  must  probably  be  urged  for  the 
frequent  appearance,  in  the  magazines  and  annuals 
of  this  period,  of  slight  poems  and  sketches  "by  the 
author  of  'Atalantis,'  'Guy  Rivers,'  etc."  A  by 
no  means  exhaustive  search  has  shown  that,  in 
1837,  he  appeared  as  a  contributor  twenty-two 
times  in  three  magazines.  The  contributions  vary 
in  length  from  a  single  sonnet  to  six  or  eight  double - 
column  pages  of  dull  blank  verse ;  and  from  a  short 
sketch  of  some  wandering  minstrels  to  an  elaborate 
review  of  Miss  Martineau's  "Society  in  America." 
White,  the  proprietor  of  the  "Southern  Literary 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  115 

Messenger,"  thought  this  critique  good  enough  to 
deserve  publication  as  a  separate  pamphlet,  and  we 
shall  find  ourselves  obliged  to  resort  to  it  in  a 
future  chapter  as  the  first  authoritative  expression 
of  Simms's  views  on  the  subject  of  slavery. 

If  our  prolific  author  could  have  been  content  to 
let  these  effusions  die  with  the  magazines  that  con 
tained  them,  it  would  have  been  better  for  his  fame ; 
but  he  could  not  do  this,  and,  in  1838,  he  added  to 
his  previous  unsuccessful  collections  of  tales  a  third, 
entitled  "Carl  Werner,"  after  the  principal  story. 
What  object  he  had  in  view,  except  to  show  that  he 
had  been  reading  translations  from  the  German  of 
late,  is  hard  to  conceive.  Yet  there  is  still  to  be 
found  among  his  papers  a  volume,  evidently  de 
signed  for  publication,  made  up  of  clippings  from 
these  long-forgotten  collections.  He  died  hard  in 
everything,  this  indefatigable  writer  of  the  old 
South ;  and  if  he  could  only  have  imparted  some  of 
his  indef  atigability  to  his  compatriots,  he  would  not 
have  collected  his  tales  in  vain.  But  this  was  not 
to  be,  and  we  are  left  to  regret  that  he  should  never 
have  been  able  to  discriminate  between  his  worth 
less  and  his  worthy  work. 

But  Spanish  romances  and  weird  tales  after  the 
German  were  not  enough  to  content  the  author  of 
"Guy  Rivers."  The  success  of  that  romance  ne 
cessitated  the  production  of  others  like  it,  and  as 
Alabama  lay  next  to  Georgia,  "  Richard  Hurdis :  a 
Tale  of  Alabama,"  was  a  proper  story  with  which 
to  continue  the  series  of  border  romances.  It  was 


116  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

published  anonymously;  for  Simms,  being  some 
thing  of  an  experimenter,  wished  to  ascertain 
whether  his  books  sold  on  their  own  merits,  or 
because  the  popular  author  of  "Guy  Rivers  "had 
written  them.  He  soon  discovered  that  it  was  the 
sensational  character  of  his  stories  that  made  them 
sell;  for  "Richard  Hurdis  "  was  at  once  successful, 
and  the  public  was  assured  that  a  new  author  had 
been  discovered  fully  equal  to  the  Carolina  novelist. 
But  the  true  parentage  of  the  blood-curdling  ro 
mance  was  soon  an  open  secret;  certainly  after 
it  was  furnished  with  a  sequel,  "  Border  Beagles : 
a  Tale  of  Mississippi,"  which  appeared  in  1840. 
This  last  production  was  followed  by  "Beauchampe, 
or  the  Kentucky  Tragedy,"  in  1842. 

These  three  stories  need  little  criticism  after 
what  has  been  said  of  "Guy  Rivers."  They  are 
less  stilted  in  diction  than  that  romance  and  more 
power  is  shown  in  their  construction;  but  then 
years  of  practice  will  naturally  affect  for  the  better 
even  a  prolific  writer  of  sensational  stories.  The 
Alabama  and  Mississippi  tales  were  based  upon 
the  history  of  the  famous  Murrell  gang  of  "land- 
pirates,"  who  in  the  early  thirties  made  life  no 
very  enviable  thing  in  the  Southwest.  Simms  had 
had  many  conversations  with  Virgil  A.  Stewart,  the 
captor  of  Murrell;  besides,  he  had  Stewart's  own 
narrative  of  his  adventures  to  rely  on.  He  stuck 
closely  to  his  authorities  and  gave  a  vivid  picture 
of  backwoods  lawlessness  and  an  amusing,  if  sad, 
description  of  backwoods  justice.  The  fictitious 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  117 

characters  and  events  introduced  are  not  specially 
interesting ;  but  there  would  seem  to  be  no  reason 
why  the  modern  reader  of  sensational  stories 
should  not  be  able  to  while  away  an  hour  with 
these.  Simms  certainly  managed  to  transfer  no 
little  of  his  own  vim  and  energy  to  his  exciting 
pages.1 

"Beauchampe,"  the  third  of  this  series,  demands 
a  few  words  to  itself.  It  is  an  almost  literal  ac 
count  of  the  killing  of  Colonel  Sharpe  by  Colonel 
Beauchamp,  which  took  place  in  Kentucky  in 
1828.  Sharpe  had  been  the  seducer  of  Beau- 
champ's  wife  before  the  latter  married  her.  Beau- 
champ  took  summary  vengeance  as  soon  as  he 
learned  the  fact,  and  mirabile  dlctu,  a  Kentucky 
jury  was  found  that  could  bring  in  a  verdict  of 
guilty  of  murder  in  the  first  degree.  The  details 
of  the  wretched  affair  can  be  found  in  any  news 
paper  of  the  time,  and  they  certainly  are  not 
needed  here;  but  one  cannot  help  smiling  at  the 
laxness  shown  by  jailers  who  could  admit  the  crim 
inal's  wife  to  his  cell  on  the  night  before  his  ex 
ecution,  and  then  be  surprised  that  the  precious 
pair  should  attempt  to  commit  suicide. 

But  Simms  gives  these  details  with  relentless 
accuracy.  Even  Poe,  whose  morbid  taste  was 
tickled  by  the  border  stories,  had  to  remonstrate 
with  the  author  for  his  unwillingness  to  trust  his 

1  The  reader  who  desires  a  soberer  account  of  the  Murrell  gang 
can  consult  an  article  oil  "  The  Uses  and  Abuses  of  Lynch  Law  " 
in  the  Whig  Review  for  December,  1850. 


118  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

imagination  in  a  single  particular.  Simms  really 
seems  to  have  thought  that  he  was  doing  the  cause  of 
public  morality  a  service  by  exposing  the  just  and 
terrible  fate  that  fell  upon  these  offenders ;  but  it 
was  a  strange  error  for  a  man  of  his  sense  to  make. 
Fourteen  years  later  he  actually  took  up  the  subject 
again,  and  in  "  Charlemont :  the  Pride  of  the  Vil 
lage,"  gave  a  detailed  and  often  salacious  account 
of  the  steps  by  which  Sharpe  succeeded  in  seducing 
the  ambitious  village  beauty,  Margaret  Cooper. 
Here,  too,  he  thought  that  he  was  doing  public 
morality  a  service :  but  he  was  no  George  Eliot,  and 
Margaret  Cooper  is,  therefore,  no  Hetty  Sorrel. 
"Beauchampe"  and  "Charlemont"  were  largely 
sold  in  Kentucky,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  at 
least  they  put  some  money  in  the  pocket  of  their 
honest  and  deserving,  if  sadly  mistaken  writer. 

This  is  a  gloomy  subject,  but  it  ought  not  to  be 
dismissed  until  its  humorous  side  is  shown,  for  it 
has  one.  In  that  exemplary  periodical,  "Godey's 
Lady's  Book,"  for  May,  1842,  after  a  very  fa 
vorable  notice  of  "Beauchampe,"  the  editor,  Mrs. 
Sarah  J.  Hale,  addressed  her  readers  as  follows: 
"  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  simultaneously  with 
the  publication  of  the  novel,  we  actually  received 
a  communication,  signed  by  a  number  of  our 
respected  friends  and  subscribers  in  Missouri,  re 
questing  us  to  obtain  the  necessary  materials  relat 
ing  to  this  famous  Kentucky  tragedy,  and  work 
them  up  into  a  tale  for  the  Lady's  Book.  .  .  .  The 
daughters  of  the  West  will  now  see  the  seducer  and 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  119 

slanderer  of  female  innocence  consigned  to  that 
immortality  of  infamy  which  he  has  so  richly  de 
served."  Encouragement  from  so  unexpected  a 
quarter  must  have  greatly  delighted  Simms  and 
those  of  his  fellow-craftsmen  who  worked  up  this 
choice  scandal,  for  Simms  was  by  no  means  alone 
in  the  predilection  he  showed  for  the  tragedy. 
Isaac  Starr  Classon  wrote  a  poem  on  it,  which 
has  fortunately  been  lost,  and  Charles  Fenno 
Hoffman  gave  a  diluted  version  of  it  in  his  over 
rated  romance,  "Greyslaer." 

Meanwhile  Simms  had  published  another  volume 
of  miscellaneous  verse,  the  title  of  which,  "  South 
ern  Passages  and  Pictures,"  is  more  quotable  than 
any  of  the  pieces  it  contained.  The  prefatory  note, 
written  by  the  author  while  on  a  visit  to  New  York 
in  the  fall  of  1838,  makes  one  regret  that  little  can 
be  said  in  favor  of  these  collected  results  of  six 
years'  labor  in  verse  making.  While  correcting  the 
proof  sheets  Simms  had  heard  of  the  death  of  his 
first  child  by  his  second  wife,  a  daughter,  Virginia 
Singleton,  who  lived  only  eleven  months. 

But  before  long  there  was  a  prospect  that 
Woodlands  would  again  be  cheered  by  the  sight 
of  a  baby's  face,  so  the  disconsolate  father  settled 
down  to  the  production  of  another  romance  in  order 
to  lay  by  something  for  the  support  of  the  new 
comer.  This  time  he  thought  he  would  combine 
Spain  and  America  instead  of  separating  them; 
and  he  was  doubtless  urged  thereto  by  the  success 
of  Bird's  two  romances  and  of  the  romantic  histo- 


120  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

ries  of  Irving.  He  accordingly  rushed  through 
what  Poe  with  some  truth  pronounced  to  be  the 
worst  of  his  romances,  "The  Damsel  of  Darien  " 
(1839),  —  a  story  founded  upon  the  adventures  of 
Balboa.  There  was  really  little  excuse  for  this  pro 
duction,  for  nothing  of  any  consequence  was  added 
to  Irving' s  pleasant  narrative,  and  certainly  the 
dilution  of  Irving' s  matter  did  not  make  up  for  the 
loss  of  Irving's  charm  of  style. 

The  year  1840  is  not  an  especially  marked  year 
in  Simms's  calendar.  Besides  "Border  Beagles," 
he  continued  publishing,  in  the  "  Southern  Literary 
Messenger,"  a  series  of  scattered  poems  under  the 
title  "Early  Lays,"  which  must  not  be  confounded 
with  the  juvenile  volume  already  criticised,  and  he 
prepared  for  the  use  of  school  children  a  short  and 
fairly  interesting  history  of  South  Carolina.  His 
daughter  Augusta  was  now  thirteen,  and  her  father 
thought  it  necessary  that  she  should  know  more 
about  the  history  of  her  native  State  than  most 
girls,  or  indeed  boys,  knew  then,  or,  it  may  be 
added,  know  now.  Especially  was  this  necessary, 
if  she  was  to  be  educated  at  a  Northern  school, 
and  he  had  doubtless  already  formed  a  plan  to 
send  her  to  Great  Barrington,  where  she  could 
be  with  one  of  Bryant's  daughters. 

In  1841,  our  untiring  writer  published  two  ro 
mances  of  the  usual  length  in  addition  to  his  accus 
tomed  quota  of  short  stories  and  poems.  The  first 
of  the  romances  was  "  The  Kinsmen,  or  the  Black 
Riders  of  the  Congaree,"  issued  in  the  spring  of 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  121 

that  year  by  Lea  and  Blanchard  of  Philadelphia, 
which  city  was  to  be  in  the  future  as  much  his 
publishing  Mecca  as  New  York.     This  story  was 
afterwards  rechristened,  and  now  appears  as  "The 
Scout."     Both  names  are  appropriate;  for  if  the 
admirable  woodsman,  John  Bannister,  is  the   re 
deeming  feature  of  the  book,  certainly  the  unnat 
ural  and  horrible  relations  existing   between  the 
heroes,  the  half-brothers  Conway,  are  enough  both 
to  give  it  a  title  and  to  furnish  a  ground  for  its  con 
demnation.    It  is  true  that  Simms  had  now  returned 
to  his  proper  field  and  given  his  readers  a  tale  of 
South  Carolina  in  the  Revolution;  but  the  bad 
company  he  had  kept  while  writing  "Richard  Hur- 
dis  "  and  "Border  Beagles  "  had  not  been  without 
its  effects.     Woodlands  was  quiet   and   domestic 
enough,  but  whenever  he  shut  himself  up  in  his 
study  he  fell  to  talking  with  thieves  and  outlaws 
and  brothers  eager  to  kill  one  another,  so  it  is  no 
wonder  that  in  this  new  romance  he  dwelt  almost 
exclusively  on  the  darker  side  of  Carolina's  revolu 
tionary  history.     There  were  enough  Tories  riding 
over  the  State  in  those  days  to  furnish  him  with  any 
number  of  villains :  and  so,  with  a  partisan  half- 
brother,  who  is  as  brave  and  noble  as  a  lion ;  and  a 
Tory  half-brother,  who  is  equally  brave,  but  decid 
edly  ignoble ;  and  a  high-bred  damsel,  who  is  loved 
by  both;   together  with    a    contemptible    British 
dandy,  and   scouts   of  all   shades   of  loyalty  and 
skill,  a  romance  was  evolved  which  occupies  a  mean 
position  between  " Richard  Hurdis "  and  "Border 


122  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

Beagles,"  and  is  warranted  not  to  put  a  reader 
asleep. 

This  cannot  be  said  of  the  second  of  the  romances 
of  this  year,  "Confession  ;  or,  the  Blind  Heart." 
Here  Simms,  by  his  own  acknowledgment,  went 
back  to  Godwin  again,  and,  as  in  the  case  of 
"Martin  Faber,"  worked  up  an  old  theme  that 
had  long  been  cast  aside.  We  have  seen  how  his 
rummaging  among  his  papers  led  to  the  useless 
inditing  of  "Pelayo"  and  "  Count  Julian ;"  now 
another  long-lost  manuscript  leads  to  a  greater 
failure.  The  motif  of  "Confession"  seems  to 
have  been  a  desire  on  Simms's  part  to  rival 
Shakespeare  in  his  greatest  play.  He  had  too 
much  sense  to  attempt  to  create  a  second  Falstaff 
in  Porgy ;  but  his  dabbling  in  morbid  psychology 
rendered  him  blind  to  the  real  nature  of  Shake 
speare's  triumph  in  "Othello."  Simms  declared 
that  Othello  was  not  truly  jealous,  because  he  had 
been  practiced  upon  by  lago,  and  he  therefore 
resolved  to  write  a  romance  in  which  the  hero 
should  be  moved  by  the  inward  workings  of  jeal 
ousy  alone.  But  here  he  unconsciously  placed 
himself  between  Scylla  and  Charybdis.  On  the 
one  hand,  he  ran  the  risk  of  making  his  hero  a 
repulsive  and  unlovable  character,  if  not  a  villain ; 
on  the  other,  of  making  him  a  fool  or  a  madman. 
But  to  make  one's  hero  a  villain  or  a  fool  or  a  mad 
man  is  but  to  write  a  repulsive  novel.  Shakespeare 
was  too  great  an  artist  to  make  such  a  mistake. 
The  fact  that  Othello  has  been  practiced  upon  by 


A  PROLIFIC  ROMANCER.  123 

lago  excites  our  sympathy  for  him  and  sustains  it 
even  to  the  horrible  catastrophe.  Othello  is  still 
human,  still  a  noble  man,  though  wrecked ;  Edward 
Clifford,  the  hero  of  "Confession,"  excites  our 
loathing  and  contempt.  Indeed,  there  is  not  a  single 
strong  or  wholesome  character  in  the  book,  which 
may  fairly  be  described  as  made  up  of  exaggerations 
and  absurdities.  It  is  worse  than  "Martin  Faber," 
to  which  it  bears  many  striking  resemblances ;  and 
so  the  reader  may  be  spared  the  steps  by  which  Clif 
ford  is  worked  up  to  killing  his  by  no  means  Desde- 
mona-like  wife.  That  refined  and  sensible  man, 
Paul  Hayne,  used  to  praise  this  story,  for  what  rea 
son  it  is  hard  to  discover;  the  present  writer  can 
see  in  it  only  a  striking  proof  of  the  futility  of  at- 
"  tempting  to  write  ,a  novel  in  order  to  illustrate  a 
pet  theory,  whether  of  psychology,  or  social  science, 
or  theology.  It  was  because  Simms's  head  had 
gone  astray  and  not  his  heart,  that  he  was  tempted 
to  write,  within  a  year  of  each  other,  two  such  re 
pulsive  and  uncalled-for  stories  as  "Confession" 
and  "Beauchampe." 

But  psychological  speculations  were  not  the  only 
ones  occupying  Simms's  mind  at  this  time.  The 
political  future  of  the  South  was  just  as  often  the 
subject  of  his  meditations,  and  the  only  two  pages 
worth  remembering  in  the  romance  criticised  above 
are  those  in  which  one  of  the  characters  gives  his 
reasons  for  emigrating  to  Texas.  To  Simms's  vivid 
imagination  the  conquest  of  Canada  was  certain  to 
come  in  a  very  few  years,  and  the  North  would 


124  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

then  be  increased  by  "six  ponderous  States,"  which 
would  be  "New  England  all  over,"  in  policy  and 
character.  To  balance  this  the  South  would  have 
Florida,  of  which  two  feeble  States  could  be  made. 
But  war  with  England  for  Canada  would  necessi 
tate  our  taking  possession  of  Cuba,  "after  a  civil 
apology  to  Spain;"  and  the  British  West  Indies, 
"which  should  of  right  be  ours,"  would  of  course 
be  ours  in  fact.  But  this  would  not  be  enough. 
Texas  would  soon  be  settled  sufficiently  with  South 
ern  men  to  render  the  conquest  of  Mexico  natural 
and  easy,  and  "the  brave  old  English  tongue" 
would  "arouse  the  best  echoes  in  the  city  of  Mon- 
tezuma!"  Then  with  Texas,  Mexico,  Cuba,  and 
the  West  Indies,  the  South  could  feel  fairly  safe 
with  regard  to  Canada;  whether  the  national  con 
science  would  be  at  rest  was  a  point  on  which  the 
glowing  prophet  did  not  see  fit  to  dwell.  Ingenu 
ous  dreamer  !  As  one  reads  his  swelling  periods 
in  the  light  of  cold  facts,  and  endeavors  to  realize 
the  state  of  mind  that  could  produce  such  visions, 
that  wonderful  line  of  Herrick's  rises  unbidden  to 
one's  mind:  — 

"  In  this  world,  the  Isle  of  Dreams," 

and,  the  sad  years  of  war  and  suffering  in  store  for 
these  dreamers  being  recalled,  the  stanza  naturally 
completes  itself :  — 

"While  we  sit  by  Sorrow's  streams, 
Tears  and  terrors  are  our  themes." 


CHAPTER  V.  * 

NEW   PHASES   OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY. 

ONLY  one  romance  of  any  length  was  published  by 
Simms  between  "Beauchampe  "  (1842)  and  "Kath 
arine  Walton  "  (1850).  This  was  "  Count  Julian, " 
which  has  been  mentioned  already.  But  if  during 
this  period  he  made  his  bow  as  a  romancer  less  fre 
quently  to  the  American  public,  he  certainly  did 
not  slight  the  English  public.  For  "Guy  Rivers  " 
had  been  reissued  in  a  cheap  form  by  a  London 
house,  in  1841,  and  "The  Kinsmen,"  "Beau 
champe,"  and  others  had  speedily  followed,  some 
very  shortly  after  their  publication  in  America. 
The  English  publishers  seem  to  have  been  satisfied 
with  the  success  of  their  reprints,  and  they  entered 
into  an  arrangement  with  Simms  by  which  they 
were  allowed  to  issue  "Count  Julian"  simultane 
ously  with  its  appearance  in  America.  But  they 
thought  it  necessary  to  prefix  a  note  combating  the 
opinion  that  had  been  advanced  by  a  reviewer  in 
the  "Spectator,"  that  the  author  of  "The  Yemas- 
see  "  had  not  the  strength,  comprehension,  and  flex 
ibility  necessary  for  a  romance.  Surely  this  re 
viewer  will  be  confounded  by  the  present  romance, 
added  the  ingenuous  publishers.  Whether  he  was 


126  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

or  not  is  doubtful,  but  Simms  was  read,  and  one 
publisher  found  it  to  his  interest  to  announce  that 
the  American  romancer  was  present  in  London  su 
perintending  the  issue  of  his  own  works,  and  editing 
a  "Library  of  Trans-Atlantic  Romance." 

But  although  he  is  now  gaining  readers  in  Eng 
land,  and  although  his  best  works  are  soon  to  be 
translated  into  German,  we  suddenly  find  him 
practically  giving  up  romance  writing  for  eight 
years.  He  does  write  a  few  short  stories  and 
novelettes,  and  he  increases  his  poetical  output;  but 
these  seem  to  be  mere  asides,  mere  holiday  tasks 
compared  with  the  main  business  of  his  life,  which 
appears  to  consist  in  endeavoring  to  thrust  as 
many  irons  as  possible  into  the  fire.  In  these 
eight  years  he  edits  two  magazines,  begins  to  edit 
a  third,  is  his  own  chief  contributor,  and  favors  his 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Richmond  confreres 
with  a  perennial  supply  of  manuscript.  He  is 
equally  dexterous  in  dashing  off  satires  and  in  de 
livering  Fourth  of  July  and  Commencement  ora 
tions.  He  turns  biographer,  and  with  apparently 
little  effort  writes  the  lives  of  three  American  he 
roes,  and  then  adventurously  tries  his  hand  on  the 
romantic  career  of  Bayard.  He  continues  his  in 
vestigations  into  the  history  of  his  native  State,  and 
publishes  a  geography  of  the  same.  He  assumes 
the  role  of  critic,  fills  his  magazines  with  reviews 
long  and  short,  and  collects  the  best  in  two  vol 
umes.  He  edits  apocryphal  plays,  and  serves  two 
years  in  the  legislature.  And  in  the  midst  of  it  all 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.    127 

he  finds  time  for  an  annual  visit  to  the  North,  for 
jauntings  through  the  South  and  Southwest,  for 
balls  and  parties  in  Charleston,  and  for  the  duties 
of  a  planter  at  Woodlands. 

Now,  although  the  quantity  of  this  work  is  not 
surprising  to  those  who  have  followed  Simms  in  his 
early  career  as  a  romancer,  it  is  somewhat  remark 
able  that  he  should  have  ceased  so  completely  to 
hobnob  with  outlaws,  or  to  accompany  partisans  on 
their  midnight  sallies,  or  to  stand  silent  with  Span 
ish  discoverers  upon  their  peaks  in  Darien  (Keats 
has  made  Cortez  stand  on  one,  so  there  is  no  reason 
why  they  should  not  all  be  made  to  do  the  same). 
Perhaps,  however,  a  little  reflection  will  tend  to 
lessen  this  surprise. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  pub 
lic  were  running  after  his  later  romances  with  the 
eagerness  they  had  shown  when  "Guy  Rivers"  and 
"  The  Yemassee  "  appeared.  American  competitors 
were  becoming  more  numerous,  and  there  were  al 
ready  signs  that  the  romantic  school  was  beginning 
to  lose  its  hold  upon  the  world.  Simms  may,  there 
fore,  have  thought,  or  else  it  may  have  been  a  mere 
feeling  with  him,  that  it  was  time  for  him  to  be 
turning  to  something  new.  Besides,  he  had  always 
valued  his  poetry  more  than  his  romances,  although 
he  held  the  romancer's  function  in  high  esteem,  and 
he  might  have  thought  that  if  he  could  make  more 
money  by  other  means,  it  would  give  him  greater 
opportunities  for  developing  his  poetic  talents. 
Then,  too,  he  had  always  had  a  hankering  for  the 


128  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

editor's  desk  and  for  a  greater  share  in  the  conduct 
of  affairs  than  can  usually  fall  to  the  lot  of  a  ro 
mancer,  weaving  his  far-off  plots  in  the  seclusion  of 
a  retired  country  house.  His  mind,  moreover,  was 
naturally  a  restless  one ;  he  liked  to  move  rapidly 
from  one  subject  to  another,  he  was  fond  of  airing 
his  theories  whether  of  politics,  or  art,  or  metaphy 
sics.  Thus  the  role  of  critic  came  easily  to  him; 
and  in  a  State  which  venerated  the  states-rights  doc 
trine  equally  with  Christianity,  it  was  no  undesir 
able  thing  to  be  elected  a  member  of  the  legislature. 
This  state  pride  might  also  be  expected  to  increase 
his  penchant  for  studies  connected  with  his  State's 
geography  and  history ;  and  from  these  studies  he 
might  easily  be  led  into  the  flowery  paths,  as  they 
were  then,  when  minute  or  unpleasant  details  were 
not  required,  of  biography,  especially  when  the  sub 
jects  of  his  eulogy  were  more  or  less  connected  with 
his  State.  In  short,  reasons  are  not  wanting  to  ex 
plain  what  at  first  sight  seems  a  curious  step ;  but 
the  chief  reason,  perhaps,  has  not  been  stated. 

We  have  seen  what  exclusive  people  the  South 
Carolinians  par  excellence  were,  and  we  have  seen 
how  natural  it  was  that  a  man  born  outside  the 
pale  of  the  aristocracy  should  have  desired  to  have 
his  talents  recognized  by  that  aristocracy.  Not 
that  Simms  had  any  fawning  characteristics  about 
him.  No  man  had  less  false  shame  than  he,  or  had 
less  desire  to  push  himself  where  he  was  not  wanted ; 
no  man  saw  so  clearly  the  narrowness  and  unfruit- 
fulness  of  the  life  led  by  wealthy  and  high-born 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.    129 

Southerners,  and  no  man  had  less  desire  to  lead  it, 
or  less  disposition  to  undervalue  his  own  self- 
achieved  reputation.  Nevertheless  he  did  desire 
that  the  people  among  whom  he  had  cast  his  lot 
should  recognize  the  value  of  his  work,  and  accord 
to  him  the  honor  and  position  that  are  due  to  great 
talents  however  displayed.  In  this  he  was  right; 
and  yet  the  fact  was  forced  upon  his  notice  every 
day  that  the  upper  classes  of  his  native  State  did  not 
recognize  him  as  a  credit  to  the  State.  Doubtless 
he  chuckled, —  but  it  was  a  grim  chuckle, —  when  he 
heard  how  Lord  Morpeth  had  silenced  the  Charles- 
tonians  who,  when  they  were  asked  by  the  traveler 
as  to  the  whereabouts  of  Simms,  replied  that  they 
did  not  know,  and  intimated  that  he  was  not  con 
sidered  such  a  great  man  in  Charleston.  "  Simms 
not  a  great  man  !"  replied  the  astonished  visitor; 
"then  for  God's  sake,  who  is  your  great  man?" 
Still,  although  he  could  chuckle  sometimes,  and  at 
other  times  denounce  this  treatment  in  his  declam 
atory  way,  or  insert  into  his  writings  a  few  well- 
pointed  sneers  at  the  vapid  pride  of  your  born 
aristocrat,  he  was  hurt  to  the  heart  by  the  indiffer 
ence  with  which  his  labors  were  received.  But 
could  this  state  of  things  be  altered?  Certainly 
not,  if  he  continued  to  write  romances,  for  the  best 
South  Carolinians  disdained  to  read  such  things. 
Yet  were  not  clouds  looming  up  over  the  South, 
was  not  every  intellect  that  she  could  call  her  own 
needed  in  the  war  that  she  must  wage  in  defense  of 
her  institutions?  Would  not  the  recognition  denied 


130  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

to  the  mere  romancer  be  gladly  given  to  the  man 
who,  as  editor,  defended  the  South  against  all  ene 
mies  and  proved  that  she  had  a  host  of  capable 
writers  in  all  departments;  who,  as  critic,  pierced 
the  armor  of  her  captious  assailants  and  carried  the 
war  into  Africa  by  pointing  out  the  weak  places  in 
this  proud  modern  civilization,  so  called?  It  would 
certainly  seem  that  to  do  less  would  savor  of  the 
rankest  ingratitude.  "Then  good -by  to  romances, 
and  welcome  to  any  work  that  will  foster  my  sec 
tion's  interest  and  win  my  countrymen's  regard." 
So,  doubtless,  thought  Simms  the  romancer,  and  he 
forthwith  set  about  his  new  tasks;  or,  rather,  he 
never  thought  anything  of  the  kind,  and  drifted  into 
his  new  work  impelled  by  influences  similar  to 
those  outlined  above,  but  by  no  means  so  plainly 
defined.  It  is  not  often  that  a  man  in  real  life  pon 
ders  over  the  propriety  of  taking  some  important 
step  in  exactly  the  fashion  his  biographer  points 
out;  but  the  latter,  although  he  gives  shape  and 
coherence  to  influences  that  are  really  shapeless 
and  incoherent,  not  infrequently  gives  us  a  true 
insight  into  his  hero's  character  and  actions. 

It  is  obvious  from  the  brief  sketch  that  has  al 
ready  been  given  of  Simms's  varied  labors  during 
the  period  of  eight  years  which  this  chapter  is  in 
tended  to  cover,  that  many  achievements  and  events 
which  seemed  very  important  to  our  author  at  the 
time  of  their  accomplishment  or  occurrence  must 
be  passed  over  at  the  present  day  in  comparative 
silence.  The  literary  value  of  work  done  under 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     131 

such  circumstances  is  naturally  slight;  and  our 
main  object  must  be  to  get  a  fair  idea  of  Simms's 
remarkable  versatility,  and  of  his  relations  to  con 
temporary  Southern  life  and  thought.  This  can 
best  be  done  by  grouping  his  labors  under  several 
convenient  heads.  And  first  of  his  work  as  editor 
and  critic. 

After  the  failure  of  the  "Southern  Literary 
Journal,"  in  1839,  its  place  was  supplied  by  a  small 
magazine  called  the  "Southron,"  which  speedily 
went  under.  Simms  certainly  contributed  one 
article  to  it,  and  probably  more.  In  1841,  a  Mr. 
P.  C.  Pendleton,  of  Savannah,  who  had  been  pub 
lishing  a  Southern  rival  to  "Godey's  Lady's  Book," 
changed  its  name  to  the  "Magnolia,  or  Southern 
Monthly,"  and  in  some  way  or  other,  hardly  by 
large  payments,  induced  Simms  to  become  first 
its  main  contributor,  then  its  associate  editor,  and 
finally,  after  the  publication  office  had  been  moved 
to  Charleston,  in  June,  1842,  its  editor  in  chief. 
Simms  labored  heroically,  and  secured  contributions 
from  the  best  Southern  writers,  such  as  Carruthers, 
Longstreet,  Meek,  and  Charleston's  mild  poetess 
of  the  L.  E.  L.  type,  Miss  Mary  E.  Lee.  But  a 
year  of  that  climate,  so  fatal  to  literary  journals, 
withered  the  promising  bud,  and  the  "  Magnolia " 
was  decently  buried  in  June,  1843.  Simms  had  got 
it  talked  about,  however,  by  publishing  in  its  col 
umns  a  story  entitled  "The  Loves  of  the  Driver," 
which  described  in  rather  too  suggestive  a  man 
ner  the  amours  of  a  negro  Adonis.  While  critics 


132  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

were  doubtless  right  in  assailing  this  story,  Simms 
had  at  least  avoided  a  fault  only  too  common  with 
some  modern  delineators  of  negro  manners.  He 
had  neither  described  the  negro  as  an  ideal  being, 
the  possessor  of  virtues  that  are  seldom  seen  even 
in  representatives  of  higher  races,  nor  had  he 
painted  him  as  an  absolute  brute,  destitute  of  all 
human  traits.  This  ability  to  hold  the  balance 
even,  when  he  is  describing  characters  of  an  hum 
ble  type,  is  to  be  noted  in  all  of  Simms 's  work. 

In  the  meantime  Mr.  Whitaker,  of  the  defunct 
"Literary  Journal,"  had  begun  to  edit  a  successor 
to  the  old  "Southern  Review  "of  Elliott  and  Le- 
gare.  This  was  the  "  Southern  Quarterly  Review," 
the  first  number  of  which  appeared  in  January, 
1842,  at  New  Orleans,  but  which  was  shortly  after 
published  .at  Charleston.  Whitaker  soon  took  as 
associate  editor  Mr.  J.  D.  B.  De  Bow,  afterwards 
founder  of  the  review  that  bore  his  name,  and  mat 
ters  continued  in  this  state  until  a  number  of 
Charleston  gentlemen,  who  were  dissatisfied  with 
the  editorship  of  a  man  not  born  a  Southerner, 
bought  the  review  and  intrusted  its  conduct  to  Mr. 
J.  Milton  Clapp.  This  was  some  time  about  Feb 
ruary,  1847.  But  Clapp  was  no  great  improve 
ment  upon  Whitaker,  and  in  March,  1849,  Simms 
was  induced  to  take  the  editorial  chair.  He  had 
previously  been  a  voluminous  contributor,  but  he 
had  not  equaled  the  gentleman  who  wrote  an  arti 
cle  one  hundred  and  two  pages  long  on  the  French 
Revolution.  Under  his  management  the  review 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     133 

improved,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  next  chapter,  but 
he  could  never  induce  his  contributors  to  shorten 
their  articles  or  to  make  them  more  interesting. 
The  padding  to  be  discovered  in  his  own  papers  may 
be  excused,  from  the  fact  that  even  long-winded 
contributors  were  scarce. 

Charleston  was,  however,  to  have  the  pleasure 
of  supporting,  or  rather  of  not  supporting,  two 
other  magazines.  Mr.  William  C.  Richards,  an 
Englishman  by  birth,  for  some  years  connected 
with  Southern  periodical  literature,  and  afterwards 
a  Baptist  minister  at  Providence,  R.  L,  had  been 
publishing  at  Penfield,  Georgia,  a  small  magazine 
rejoicing  in  the  meaningless  title  of  the  "Orion." 
But  the  "Orion"  outgrew  Penfield,  and  at  the 
solicitation  of  Simms  and  others  it  was  transferred 
to  Charleston.  In  that  unwholesome  atmosphere 
it  lived  a  year,  possibly  two ;  nor  did  it  die  for 
lack  of  aid  from  Simms.  He  wrote  articles  and 
poems  without  number  for  it,  and  he  edited  it 
during  the  very  oppressive  months  of  July  and 
August,  1844,  when  Richards  was  taking  a  holi 
day.  How  he  was  paid,  except  by  the  belief  that 
he  was  doing  his  duty  by  his  section  and  by  his 
friend,  is  hard  to  determine.  Still  he  kept  the 
numerous  books  sent  to  him  for  review,  and  he  cer 
tainly  utilized  his  carefully  prepared  articles  on 
"The  Moral  Character  of  Hamlet,"  as  materials  for 
a  future  lecture. 

But  contributing  to  the  "Orion,"  "Godey's," 
"Graham's,"  the  "Democratic  Review,"  and 


134  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

the  "Southern  Quarterly,"  was  not  like  editing  a 
magazine  of  his  own;  so  in  January,  1845,  the 
"Southern  and  Western  Monthly  Magazine  and  Re 
view,"  often  known  as  "Simms's  Magazine,"  made 
its  appearance.  Whether  it  was  its  ambitious 
name,  or  the  fact  that  Simms  for  the  most  part 
filled  its  pages  with  his  own  productions,  or  the  air 
of  Charleston  that  killed  it,  is  uncertain.  Possibly 
all  these  causes  were  effective ;  at  least  it  is  clear 
that  after  surviving  twelve  months  it  was  absorbed 
in  the  "Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  that  mag 
azine  becoming,  in  January,  1846,  the  "Southern 
and  Western  Literary  Messenger  and  Review," 
which  most  ponderous  title  it  soon  dropped. 

"Simms's  Magazine  "  was  not  a  bad  one  as  mag 
azines,  especially  Southern  magazines,  went  then. 
Its  editor  was  conscientious  enough,  and  he  per 
suaded  a  few  of  his  Northern  friends,  like  Evert 
Duyckinck  and  Headley,  to  help  him  out  with  an 
occasional  contribution.  He  also  relied  on  Meek, 
Albert  Pike,  W.  C.  Richards,  Mrs.  Caroline  Lee 
Hentz  (afterwards  a  prolific  novelist),  A.  J.  Re- 
quier,  and  a  young  Carolinian  poet  and  protege, 
J.  M.  Legare.  But  his  main  dependence  was  him 
self  and  his  double  self,  "Adrian  Beaufain,"  whose 
name  was  appended  to  many  lyrics.  It  is  easy  to 
count  up  over  twenty -five  long  articles  and  tales  of 
his  own  composition,  some  of  which  had  never  been 
published  before,  but  which  were  certainly  made  to 
do  good  service  afterwards.  A  glance  at  the  biblio 
graphical  appendix  will  show  that  this  editorial 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     135 

work  constituted  only  a  small  part  of  Simms's 
labors  for  the  year  1845.  Certainly  if  ever  a  man 
strove  to  make  the  outside  world  believe  that  his 
section  had  a  literature,  Simms  was  that  man. 
There  is  no  need  to  speak  here  of  the  quality  of 
his  work;  for  as  he  himself  subsequently  collected 
the  best  of  it  for  publication  in  a  more  permanent 
form,  there  will  be  occasion  shortly  to  be  suffi 
ciently  critical. 

A  somewhat  different  piece  of  editorial  work, 
and  of  later  date,  is  found  in  "A  Supplement  to  the 
Plays  of  William  Shakespeare,"  a  volume  which 
Simms  had  long  planned,  and  which  he  finally  suc 
ceeded  in  having  published,  in  April,  1848.  Seven 
only  of  the  apocryphal  plays  were  given,  and  the 
editor's  own  work  was  slight  both  in  quantity  and 
in  quality.  The  only  play  annotated  with  any  full 
ness  was  "The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen,"  and  the 
notes  and  introduction  to  this  were  mainly  derived 
from  Charles  Knight.  Indeed,  a  cursory  examina 
tion  of  the  volume  would  lead  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  was  but  a  piece  of  hack  work,  and  therefore 
scarcely  worthy  of  mention.  Such  a  conclusion 
would  be  highly  unjust  to  Simms.  He  really  un 
dertook  the  task  as  a  labor  of  love,  and  his  own 
editorial  and  critical  deficiencies  were  due  to  his 
lack  of  education  and  to  his  Southern  environment. 
Ever  since  the  days  of  his  boyhood  he  had  been  de 
voted  to  the  old  drama.  He  had  discoursed  wisely 
on  Shakespeare  in  the  "  Southern  Literary  Gazette," 
and  more  lately  in  the  "Orion,"  and  he  had  never 


136  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

tired  of  jotting  down  his  supposed  textual  emenda 
tions.  He  had  a  fancy  for  digging  out  quotations 
from  little-read  plays,  and  setting  them  at  the  heads 
of  his  chapters,  and  he  not  infrequently  put  them 
into  the  mouths  of  his  characters,  regardless  of  the 
proprieties  of  time  and  place.  His  library  was 
doubtless  better  supplied  with  works  relating  to  the 
drama  than  that  of  any  private  gentleman  in  the 
South;  and  he  was  constantly  advising  his  friends 
and  readers  to  take  up  his  favorite  study. 

But  though  Simms  had  become  an  enthusiastic 
student  of  what  is,  perhaps,  the  greatest  body  of 
literature  the  world  has  ever  seen,  he  could  not 
make  himself  a  scholarly  student.  His  early 
training  and  associations,  nay,  his  life-long  envi 
ronment,  were  against  this.  The  vicissitudes  of  his 
youth  had  deprived  his  mind  of  that  quality  of  re 
pose  which  is  essential  for  scholarly  work.  Simms 
was  restless  and  aggressive.  The  scorn  the  Caro 
lina  literati  had  bestowed  upon  him  had  created  in 
him  a  spirit  of  defiance  and  of  self-reliance  almost 
amounting  to  conceit.  Such  a  man  could  display 
great  energy,  but  no  great  patience ;  could  be  good 
at  dashing  off  outlines,  but  not  at  filling  in.  It  is 
no  wonder,  then,  that  as  a  critic  he  is  often  discov 
ered  to  be  shallow  where  he  thought  himself  pro 
found,  that  he  is  never  subtle  or  penetrating,  and 
that  he  is  at  his  best  when  he  forgets  his  theories 
and  his  second-hand  erudition,  and  talks  simply 
about  things  he  has  seen  and  heard  and  done. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  conclude  our  survey  of 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITEEAEY  ACTIVITY.     137 

Simms's  critical  work  by  a  brief  examination  of 
the  two  volumes  entitled  "Views  and  Reviews 
in  American  Literature,  History,  and  Fiction " 
(1846).  Under  this  somewhat  grandiloquent  title 
were  collected  the  best  of  his  contributions  to  his 
own  and  other  magazines.  It  is  true  that  he  con 
tinued  to  do  critical  work  to  the  day  of  his  death, 
but  he  never  surpassed  the  essays  here  collected,  and 
except  for  an  occasional  reference  there  will  be 
little  necessity  for  further  comment  in  this  connec 
tion.  Of  the  eleven  essays  thus  republished,  three 
deserve  favorable  mention.  These  are  "Daniel 
Boone,"  an  unpretending  sketch  of  a  character 
Simms  could  fully  appreciate;  "The  Writings  of 
James  Fenimore  Cooper,"  a  sound  critical  essay 
with  no  trace  of  unworthy  rivalry  on  Simms's  part; 
and  "Weems,  the  Biographer  and  Historian,"  a 
gossipy  article,  which  would  almost  bear  republi- 
cation  to-day.  In  1852,  Bryant  wrote  of  the  paper 
on  Cooper  as  "a  critical  essay  of  great  depth  and 
discrimination,  to  which  I  am  not  sure  that  any 
thing  hitherto  written  on  the  same  subject  is  fully 
equal." 

The  most  elaborate  essay  is  styled,  "  The  Epochs 
and  Events  of  American  History,  as  suited  to  the 
Purposes  of  Art  in  Fiction."  This  was  the  final 
form  Simms  gave  to  two  lectures  previously  deliv 
ered  before  the  Georgia  Historical  Society,  and  here 
he  allowed  his  theories  to  run  away  with  him.  In 
consequence  the  crudities  of  the  production  attract 
more  attention  than  the  vigor  of  thought  which 


138  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

is  occasionally  visible.  For  example,  when  he  at 
tempts  to  show  how  a  future  dramatist  can  use  the 
story  of  Arnold's  treason  (he  tried  it  himself),  and 
tells  us  of  Washington  that,  "while  his  sword 
achieves  the  death  of  the  foreign  emissary  (Andre), 
his  stern  voice,  rising  preeminent  over  all  the  sounds 
of  battle,  shall  send  the  traitor  (Arnold),  hell  in 
his  heart  and  curses  on  his  lips,  to  the  inglorious 
scaffold,  which  the  audience  does  not  see,"  he  is 
simply  amusing,  without  in  the  least  intending  to  be 
so.  One  can  perceive,  however,  that  constant  writ 
ing  has  simplified  Simms's  style,  and  one  con 
cludes,  therefore,  that  he  has  not  crystallized. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  his  contemporaries  the 
most  important  work  done  by  Simms  during  these 
crowded  years  is,  perhaps,  to  be  found  in  his  four 
biographies  of  Marion  (1844),  Captain  John  Smith 
(1846),  the  Chevalier  Bayard  (1848),  and  General 
Greene  (1849).  Even  now  the  books  have  some 
value  as  popular  and  uncritical  accounts  of  the  ro 
mantic  heroes  with  whom  they  are  concerned,  and 
the  wide  circulation  of  the  two  first  mentioned  is  a 
proof  that  Simms  must  have  done  some  good  by  fa 
miliarizing  his  countrymen  with  the  noble  deeds  of 
noble  men.  Of  these  four  works  the  one  that  en 
joyed  most  popular  favor  would  seem  to  be  the  least 
interesting.  "The  Life  of  Marion  "  went  through 
three  editions  in  three  months,  and  is  known  to 
have  reached  as  many  as  ten ;  yet,  if  it  is  not  posi 
tively  dull,  it  fails  to  charm  one  as  a  life  of  such  a 
fascinating  character  ought  to  do.  But  perhaps 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     139 

this  judgment  comes  from  a  comparison  of  the  Mar 
ion  of  the  revolutionary  romances  with  the  Marion 
of  the  biography,  which  is  hardly  a  fair  procedure. 
The  life  of  the  magniloquent  founder  of  the  Vir 
ginia  Colony  was  a  more  interesting  and  scarcely 
less  popular  production;  but  the  biography  on 
which  Simms  took  most  pains  and  which  he  fancied 
most  was  very  little  read.  It  is  not  often  that  one 
can  agree  with  an  author  in  his  estimate  of  his  own 
work ;  but  it  is  not  difficult  to  share  with  Simms 
his  liking  for  "The  Life  of  the  Chevalier  Bayard." 
True,  there  is  no  great  research  visible  in  its  pages ; 
but  then  a  general  reader  does  not  usually  care  for 
great  research  when  a  romantic  character  is  in  ques 
tion.  It  suffices  that  this  book  reads  smoothly, 
that  it  treats  of  interesting  men  and  times  in  an 
easy  and  acceptable  way,  that  it  makes  no  pretense 
of  being  a  work  of  erudition.  If  Simms  had  al 
ways  used  such  simple  English  as  is  to  be  found 
here,  he  would  have  to-day  a  much  higher  rank  as 
a  writer. 

"The  Life  of  Nathanael  Greene"  deserves  a 
special  paragraph  only  from  the  fact  that  it  pur 
ports  to  be  edited  by  Simms.  There  is,  however, 
no  reason  to  believe  that  he  did  not  write  it.  He 
speaks,  it  is  true,  of  "revising  for  the  publishers 
the  manuscript  of  the  present  work; "  but  Simms 's 
ear -marks  are  visible  through  the  whole  of  it,  and 
he  had  had  such  a  biography  in  contemplation  for 
years.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  book  is  an  orthodox 
and  decorous  biography  and,  on  the  whole,  well 


140  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

written.  Of  course  no  one  would  now  think  of 
consulting  it  as  an  authority,  but  Professor  Chan- 
ning  is  right  when  he  tells  us  that  it  "has  at  least 
the  merit  of  being  interesting."1  The  reader  will 
probably  conclude  from  all  that  has  been  said  that  if 
Simms  did  not  add  permanently  to  his  reputation 
by  these  biographies,  he  nevertheless  enabled  the 
public  to  get  much  useful  information  in  a  pleasant 
way,  and  also  added  to  an  income  which  was  by  no 
means  too  large  for  an  ever-growing  family. 

This  income  could  not  have  been  much  increased 
by  the  lectures  and  orations  and  political  harangues 
which  occupied  what  might  be  called  spare  hours, 
if  Simms  could  be  conceived  as  having  had  any 
such  luxuries.  They  helped,  however,  to  spread 
his  reputation,  and  doubtless  made  him  think  that 
before  long  he  would  be  recognized  as  a  political 
leader.  Several  of  them  were  published,  but  none 
needs  any  special  notice.  One  delivered  at  the 
University  of  Alabama,  in  December,  1843,  seems 
to  have  been  followed  by  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Laws,  the  honorable  abbreviation  for  which  was 
afterwards  tacked  on  to  his  name  on  all  occasions 
by  his  admirers,  and  gave  those  who  did  not  like 
him  an  opportunity  for  indulging  in  a  little  sar 
casm.  Simms  himself  modestly  wished  that  the 
degree  had  not  been  conferred  upon  him,  for  in  his 
soberer  moments  he  did  not  fail  to  remember  and 
regret  his  lack  of  thorough  scholarship. 

Some  of  his  orations  were  political  in  character, 
1  In  Winsor's  "Narrative  and  Critical  History,"  etc.,  vi.  512. 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITER AEY  ACTIVITY.    141 

and  the  one  delivered  at  Aikin,  South  Carolina,  on 
the  4th  of  July,  1844,  was  certainly  bold  enough 
in  its  utterances  to  convince  all  classes  of  South 
Carolinians  that  Simms  would  lend  his  support  to 
any  scheme  of  Southern  aggrandizement  that  the 
more  violent  leaders  of  the  aristocracy  might  coun 
sel.  It  was  probably  as  a  reward  for  this  boldness 
that  he  found  himself  elected  a  member  of  the 
state  legislature  from  Barnwell  County  for  the  ses 
sion  of  1844—46.  Although  his  career  in  the  lower 
house  of  that  body  does  not  seem  to  have  done 
much  to  advance  his  political  interests,  he  soon  be 
came  noted  as  a  forcible  speaker  and  a  stanch  up 
holder  of  the  cause  of  his  section.  For  drafting 
resolutions  against  the  protective  system,  the 
schemes  of  abolitionists,  and  the  opposition  to  the 
annexation  of  Texas,  the  pen  of  so  ready  a  writer 
was  naturally  in  demand.  He  never  needed  prepa 
ration,  but  could  always  be  relied  on  for  a  telling 
speech  against  lukewarm  members  who  thought 
that  their  State  was  speeding  too  fast  along  its 
eccentric  path.  His  talents  commanded  respect, 
and  his  hearty  manners  and  his  fund  of  good  sto 
ries  won  him  many  friends.  Some  of  these  were  in 
the  habit  of  writing  to  him  in  after  years,  and  wish 
ing  that  he  were  still  in  the  House  to  thunder  out 
his  patriotic  speeches  as  in  the  days  of  yore.  But 
they  did  more  than  remember  him  when  he  was  ab 
sent  ;  for,  as  a  reward  for  his  honorable  services, 
it  was  proposed  to  give  him  a  strictly  honorable 
office,  that  of  lieutenant-governor.  According  to 


142  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

the  Columbia  correspondent  of  the  "Courier,"  it 
was  believed  up  to  the  day  of  the  election  that 
Simms  would  receive  the  office ;  but  on  December 
8,  1846,  the  aforesaid  correspondent  wrote  to  his 
paper  as  follows:  "The  Hon.  David  Johnson  was 
elected  governor  to-day,  without  opposition,  and 
the  Hon.  W.  M.  Cain,  of  Pineville,  lieutenant- 
governor,  by  a  majority  of  one  vote  over  William 
Gilmore  Simms,  Esq." 

What  happened  in  the  one  day  that  intervened 
between  these  announcements  can  only  be  left  to 
conjecture.  Perhaps  Simms  had  made  enemies  as 
well  as  friends  by  his  boldness ;  perhaps  there  was 
some  secret  log-rolling.  It  is  certain,  however,  that 
he  never  afterwards  came  so  near  to  getting  an 
office,  and  his  political  aspirations,  if  not  crushed, 
must  have  received  a  great  check.  But  his  influ 
ence  upon  the  policy  of  his  State  and  section  was  to 
be  none  the  less  felt,  and  it  is  not  certain  that  his 
happiness  or  his  usefulness  or  his  income  would 
have  been  increased  by  his  election.  He  did  not, 
however,  give  up  public  speaking  because  his  voice 
was  no  longer  to  be  heard  in  legislative  halls. 
Paul  Hayne  tells  us  how,  when  in  the  midsummer 
of  1847  he  was  an  interested  boy  listener  at  a  pub 
lic  meeting  in  Charleston,  a  cry  arose  for  "  Simms, 
Gilmore  Simms."  He  describes  how  the  author 
whose  romances  had  time  and  again  thrilled  him 
with  delight  "came  forward  with  a  slow,  stately 
step  under  the  full  blaze  of  the  chandeliers,  a  man 
in  the  prime  of  life,  tall,  vigorous,  and  symmetri- 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     143 

cally  formed."  He  gives  an  animated  account  of 
the  effect  produced  upon  him  by  the  noble  head 
with  its  "conspicuously  high  forehead,  finely  de 
veloped  in  the  regions  of  ideality,"  by  the  frequent, 
unrestrained  gesticulation  of  the  speaker  as  with 
almost  grotesque  emphasis  of  voice  and  manner  he 
denounced  certain  editors  that  had  aroused  his  ire 
by  their  treatment  of  exciting  topics  connected  with 
the  Mexican  war. 

Having  now  passed  in  rapid  review  the  labors  of 
the  editor  and  critic,  the  biographer*,  the  orator 
and  politician,  we  are  left  to  consider  the  short 
stories  and  poetry  that  saw  the  light  during  these 
busy  years.  The  volumes  that  fall  under  these 
categories  would  be  considered  numerous  for  any 
other  man  than  Simms ;  but  though  numerous,  they 
can  be  easily  grouped,  and  only  two  will  require 
special  notice.  And  as  poetry  rightfully  has  the 
place  of  honor  over  prose,  we  may  consider  Simms's 
poetry  first,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  only  by 
courtesy  that  we  can  apply  the  term  "poetry  "  at  all 
in  his  case. 

Seven  volumes  of  serious  verse  and  one  lengthy 
satire  of  local  interest  are  certainly  a  sufficient 
tribute  for  one  man  to  pay  to  his  muse  in  eight 
years.  It  is  true  that  some  of  these  productions  do 
not  extend  to  a  hundred  pages,  but  they  amount  in 
the  aggregate  to  a  formidable  quantity  of  printed 
matter.  First  in  order  of  time  was  "Donna  Flo 
rida"  (1843),  an  avowed  imitation  of  Byron,  in 
which  Ponce  de  Leon  takes  the  place  of  Don  Juan. 


144  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

This  youthful  production  had  been  left  unfinished, 
and  Simms's  long  preface  gave  no  sufficient  rea 
son  for  its  subsequent  publication,  especially  in  an 
incomplete  form.  Next  came  a  series  of  sonnets 
entitled  "Grouped  Thoughts  and  Scattered  Fan 
cies  "  (1845),  which  may  be  left  for  fuller  consider 
ation.  This  small  volume  was  followed  by  a  larger 
one,  called  "Areytos,  or  Songs  of  the  South" 
(1846).  Simms  had  borrowed  the  word  "  Areyto  " 
from  the  native  language  of  Cuba,  and  he  did  his 
best  to  introduce  it  into  English,  being  ignorant, 
perhaps,  of  the  fact  that  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  in  the 
"Defence  of  Poesy,"  had  forestalled  him  by  nearly 
three  hundred  years.  The  collection  graced  by 
this  pretty  name  consisted  in  the  main  of  juvenile 
love  lyrics.  It  was  followed  by  "Lays  of  the 
Palmetto  "  (1848),  a  patriotic  tribute  to  the  valor 
of  the  Carolina  regiment  of  that  name  in  the  Mex 
ican  war,  and  by  the  cumbrously  named  volume 
"Atalantis:  a  Story  of  the  Sea;  With  the  Eye  and 
the  Wing  —  Poems  chiefly  Imaginative."  In  the 
latter  publication  he  included  a  revised  edition  of 
"Atalantis,"  and  a  collection  of  such  of  his  poems 
as  seemed  to  have  their  source  in  the  imagination 
rather  than  in  the  fancy.  This  Wordsworthian 
experiment  was  hardly  successful,  except  for  a  very 
spirited  paraphrase  of  Isaiah  xxi.,  entitled  "The 
Burden  of  the  Desert."  The  long  list  of  his  poet 
ical  ventures  is  concluded  by  "The  Cassique  of 
Accabee  "  (1849)  —  a  pathetic  Indian  tale  which 
is  even  now  not  unreadable  —  and  by  "Sabbath 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITER AEY  ACTIVITY.     145 

Lyrics  "  (1849),  a  collection  of  biblical  paraphrases 
more  remarkable  for  their  pious  than  for  their 
poetical  qualities.  An  unpublished  work  of  this 
period  is  an  adaptation  of  Shakespeare's  "Timon 
of  Athens  "  for  the  stage,  made  at  the  request  of 
Edwin  Forrest.  For  some  reason  or  other  the 
manuscript  was  left  on  Simms's  hands,  and  it  now 
lies  among  the  numerous  literary  effects  bequeathed 
by  our  author  to  his  heirs. 

In  considering  the  volume  of  sonnets  ambitiously 
entitled  "Grouped  Thoughts  and  Scattered  Fan 
cies,"  it  is  only  fair  to  say  at  the  outset  that  they 
will  be  used  as  a  text  to  point  some  remarks  on 
the  chief  characteristics  of  Southern  poetry  in  gen 
eral.  Their  intrinsic  value  is  slight;  nevertheless 
Simms  thought  fit  to  publish  them  twice,  once  se 
rially  in  the  "Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  and 
shortly  afterwards  in  a  tiny  volume.  There  are 
eighty-four  of  these  quatorzains,  —  for  with  a  few 
exceptions  they  cannot  be  called  sonnets,  —  most  of 
them  evidently  modeled  upon  Wordsworth's  least 
meritorious  efforts  of  a  similar  nature.  Occasion 
ally  a  legitimate  sonnet  of  the  Shakespearean  type 
occurs,  —  since  Mr.  Theodore  Watts 's  discussion 
of  the  sonnet  in  "The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica" 
one  is  warranted  in  writing  thus,  —  and  then  the 
poet  is  evidently  at  his  best.  The  wonder  is  that 
he  did  not  see  that  the  stricter  his  form,  the  better 
his  poetry  became.  But  neither  he  nor  any  other 
ante-bellum  Southern  poet  seems  to  have  seen  this 
fundamental  truth  of  poetic  art.  The  Southern 


146  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

poet  was  too  easy-going  to  succeed  in  any  form  of 
verse  that  required  patience  and  skill.  He  pre 
ferred  a  less  hampering  stanza  than  the  sonnet  in 
which  to  display  his  genius,  and  so,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  he  seldom  displayed  any  genius  at 
all.  Mr.  Stedman  was  right  when  he  said  "that 
a  collection  of  the  earlier  Southern  poetry  worth 
keeping  would  be  a  brief  anthology;  "  but  he  was 
wrong  when  he  spoke  of  Wilde  and  Pinkney  sing 
ing  "  their  Lovelace  lyrics,"  unless  indeed  he  had 
reference  to  those  careless,  slipshod  poems  that 
make  one  wonder  how  they  could  ever  have  been 
written  by  the  author  of  "To  Althea  from  Prison." 
It  is  almost  an  insult  to  the  memory  of  the  real 
Lovelace  to  speak  of  his  perfect  work  in  connec 
tion  with  even  the  best  of  the  early  Southern  lyrics. 
For  although  Pinkney 's  "A  Health"  and  Wilde's 
"My  Life  is  like  a  Summer  Rose"  and  Cooke's 
"Florence  Vane  "  are  poems  of  decided  merit,  they 
nevertheless  fall  far  short  of  that  perfection  which 
is  characteristic  of  the  best  Caroline  lyrics.  The 
present  writer  will  not  be  suspected  of  denying  that 
in  many  respects  these  Southern  cavaliers,  who 
sang  of  love  and  wine  and  sunny  skies,  were  like 
their  dashing  gallant  prototypes,  who  sang  of  their 
lady-loves  and  fought  for  King  Charles.  They 
were  alike  in  many  particulars  and  they  took  much 
the  same  easy  view  of  their  art,  but  —  and  the  dif 
ference  is  immense  —  the  Southern  poet  never  by 
any  chance  sang  one  pure  and  perfect  strain ;  while 
Montrose  and  Lovelace  and  Suckling  are  names 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     147 

that  can  never  be  dissociated  from  the  memory  of 
perfect  songs.  To  take  but  one  example,  there  is 
little  doubt  that  more  than  one  Southern  gentleman 
with  a  taste  for  pleasant  rhyming  loved  his  section 
as  well  and  fought  for  her  cause  as  nobly  as  that 
ill-fated  but  glorious  soldier  and  poet,  James,  Mar 
quis  of  Montrose;  and  yet,  though  volumes  have 
been  filled  with  the  verses  written  by  these  gallant 
men  in  behalf  of  the  cause  for  which  they  fought, 
though  such  lyrics  as  Randall's  "My  Maryland" 
and  Timrod's  "Charleston"  are  enshrined  in  our 
memories,  all  their  volumes  and  all  their  poems 
would  not  compensate  us  for  the  loss  of  those  eight 
lines  beginning  "Great,  good,  and  just,"  wherein 
Montrose  mourned  the  death  of  his  unfortunate 
sovereign. 

Now  while  it  may  be  difficult  to  explain  why  the 
Cavaliers  of  England  should,  with  their  known  in 
difference  with  regard  to  a  purely  literary  reputa 
tion,  have  written  such  perfect  songs,  it  is  not  so 
difficult  to  see  why  the  cavalier  poets  of  the  South 
failed  to  equal  them  in  their  flights.  The  influ 
ence  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth  had  not,  yet  died  from 
the  England  of  Charles  the  First.  There  was  lit 
tle  that  was  commonplace  about  the  life  that  Love 
lace  and  Suckling  led.  But  life  in  the  South,  in 
spite  of  its  picturesqueness  in  certain  directions, 
was  largely  commonplace  with  respect  to  the  things 
of  the  mind.  A  Southerner  had  to  think  in  cer 
tain  grooves,  or  else  have  his  opinions  smiled  at 
as  harmless  eccentricities.  His  imagination  was 


148  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

dwarfed  because  his  mind  was  never  really  free,  also 
because  his  love  of  ease  rarely  permitted  him  to  ex 
ercise  the  faculty.  He  had  no  incitement  to  high 
poetic  achievement  from  the  influence  shed  upon 
him  by  great  poets  of  a  generation  just  passed. 
The  models  before  him  were  those  of  statesmen  and 
men  of  action,  and  he  lost  his  chances  for  distinc 
tion  if  he  proposed  to  himself  any  others.  Besides, 
he  had  no  critics,  no  audience  whose  applause  was 
worth  having.  His  easy  verses  were  received  with 
a  smile  by  his  friends  or  with  extravagant  praise 
by  an  editor  only  too  glad  to  fill  his  columns. 
When  praise  was  so  readily  obtained,  he  naturally 
took  the  easiest  way  to  obtain  it. 

A  study  of  Southern  sonnets  will  prove  the  truth 
of  these  remarks.  The  number  of  regular  and 
commendable  sonnets  written  in  the  South  before 
the  war  might,  one  may  venture  to  say  without 
having  read  all  the  quatorzains  published,  be  num 
bered  on  the  fingers  of  two  hands.  Even  Hayne, 
by  far  the  best  of  Southern  sonneteers,  wrote  such 
of  his  sonnets  as  are  really  worthy  of  preserva 
tion  after  the  war  had  taught  him  the  necessity  of 
patience  and  labor.  Timrod,  who  had  a  greater 
poetic  genius  than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  failed 
conspicuously  in  his  sonnets ;  and  this,  not  because 
he  had  nothing  to  say,  but  because  he  did  not  see 
the  necessity  of  choosing  a  proper  metrical  form. 
It  is  not  proposed  to  claim  that  there  are  only  three 
forms  that  the  sonnet  can  assume,  but  to  maintain 
that  poets  who  use  other  forms  must  make  good 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     149 

their  choice  by  the  success  of  their  experiments. 
And  if  a  poet  goes  on  writing  in  forms  that  are 
obviously  not  successful,  it  is  a  sign  that  he  does 
not  appreciate  the  first  principles  of  his  art.  But 
this  is  precisely  what  Simms  and  the  galaxy  of 
small  poets  that  surrounded  him  did  for  years. 
Hence,  nearly  all  their  poetic  work,  especially  their 
sonnets,  must  be  considered  as  having  failed. 
They  could  occasionally  produce  a  good  verse  or 
two,  they  not  infrequently  had  something  to  say; 
but  their  poems  rarely  approximated  perfection,  and 
so  perished.  Then,  too,  these  poets  lacked  self- 
control  in  other  respects.  They  let  their  emotions 
run  away  with  them,  and  were  forever  gushing. 
They  could  not  stop  to  think  whether  the  subjects 
they  had  chosen  were  capable  of  poetic  treatment. 
Simms  wrote  twelve  sonnets  on  "Progress  in 
America,"  and  an  equal  number  on  the  Oregon 
question,  and  one  is  thankful  that  he  did  not  see 
fit  to  furnish  Wordsworth's  "Sonnets  upon  the 
Punishment  of  Death,"  with  a  companion  series 
upon  "The  Benefits  of  Lynch  Law."  They  were 
also  more  attracted  by  poetry  of  a  rhetorical  kind 
than  by  purer  and  simpler  styles ;  but  then  a  fond 
ness  for  gorgeous  rhetoric  was  a  common  Southern 
weakness.  These  remarks  may  be  brought  to  a 
close  with  the  observation  that  while  the  faults  that 
have  been  mentioned  are  more  or  less  characteris 
tic  of  all  early  American  poets,  they  are  preemi 
nently  characteristic  of  Southern  poets,  Poe  alone 
excepted.  For  Poe  was  an  artist,  whatever  one 


150  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

may  think  of  the  subjects  on  which  he  exercised 
his  art. 

During  these  busy  years  Simms  published  little 
in  his  proper  department  of  prose  fiction  that  need 
occupy  our  attention.  In  the  latter  part  of  1844 
appeared  a  ghost  story  entitled  "Castle  Dismal." 
Poe  praised  this  story  highly,  and  as  its  theme  lay 
in  Poe' s  own  province,  his  opinion  is  entitled  to 
carry  much  weight;  a  modern  reader,  however, 
might  be  inclined  to  set  less  store  by  the  supernat 
ural  portions  of  the  story  than  by  the  description 
of  the  old  homestead  from  which  it  took  its  name. 
Poe  also  praised,  but  less  highly,  another  novelette 
published  shortly  afterwards  and  entitled  "Helen 
Halsey."  This  was  a  "border"  story,  but  it  was 
honorably  distinguished  from  "Richard  Hurdis" 
and  its  class  by  being  shorter  and  by  having  a 
smaller  complement  of  crimes  and  casualties. 

But  the  year  1845  saw  the  publication  of  a  book 
which  seems  to  have  marked  for  "his  contemporaries 
the  culminating  point  of  Simms 's  reputation  as  a 
writer  of  fiction.  This  was  the  first  series  of  the 
collected  tales  known  as  "  The  Wigwam  and  Cabin." 
A  second  series  appeared  in  February  of  the  next 
year.  These  volumes  contained  thirteen  of  the 
best  short  stories  that  Simms  had  contributed  to  the 
various  magazines  and  annuals.  As  the  name  im 
ported,  they  were  concerned  with  pioneer  and  In 
dian  life;  and  they  had  two  obvious  advantages 
over  the  romances  he  had  previously  published  on 
similar  subjects.  They  were  shorter,  and  so  gave 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITEEABY  ACTIVITY.     151 

little  room  for  the  diffuseness  which  had  so  con 
stantly  characterized  his  more  elaborate  works ;  and, 
depending  as  they  did  on  a  single  dramatic  inci 
dent,  they  furnished  no  opportunity  for  the  devel 
opment  of  a  plot  in  which  virtuous  heroes  should 
fall  into  all  sorts  of  diabolical  traps  set  for  them  by 
professional  villains.  Not  that  the  villain  does  not 
appear  in  these  tales ;  he  does  most  decidedly,  but 
he  is  precluded  from  running  through  a  long  course 
of  crimes  which  must  be  described  with  a  painful 
accuracy.  It  is  one  thing  to  be  present  at  a  crime 
that  is  quickly  over ;  it  is  another  thing  to  be  forced 
to  take  cognizance  of  every  revolting  circumstance 
connected  with  a  crime. 

The  first  tale  in  the  collection  was  entitled 
"  Grayling,  or  '  Murder  will  out. ' "  Upon  its 
first  publication  in  "The  Gift,"  for  1842,  the  Lon 
don  "Examiner  "  had  said:  "This  is  an  American 
ghost  story,  and  without  exception  the  best  one 
we  ever  read.  The  rationale  of  the  whole  matter 
of  such  appearances  is  given  with  fine  philosophy 
and  masterly  interest.  We  never  read  anything 
more  perfect  or  more  consummately  told." 1  Now 
in  1845  Poe  said  in  his  "Broadway  Journal :  " 
"  We  have  no  hesitation  in  calling  it  the  best  ghost 
story  we  ever  read.  It  is  full  of  the  richest  and 
most  vigorous  imagination,  is  forcibly  conceived, 
and  detailed  throughout  with  a  degree  of  artistic 
skill  which,  has  had  no  parallel  among  American 
story-tellers  since  the  epoch  of  Brockden  Brown."2 

1  Quoted  in  the  Knickerbocker  for  November,  1841. 
8  The  Broadway  Journal  for  October  4,  1845. 


152  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

This  testimony  to  the  merits  of  "Grayling"  can 
not  be  regarded  lightly ;  but  it  would  seem  to  be 
a  little  extravagant.  The  tale  is  certainly  well 
told;  but  Poe  or  Hawthorne  would  have  told  it 
much  better.  They  would  have  paid  more  atten 
tion  to  details,  and  thus  have  provided  a  more  ar 
tistic  setting;  in  other  words,  they  would  have 
thrown  an  air  of  glamour  over  the  various  events 
described,  and  so  have  strengthened  the  spell  that 
the  successful  narrator  of  a  ghost  story  must  cast 
over  his  hearers  or  readers.  Simms,  on  the  con 
trary,  pays  little  attention  to  details,  and  tells  the 
story  just  as  we  may  imagine  his  grandmother 
told  it  to  him.  Of  course  it  required  no  little 
power  to  do  this,  but  by  adopting  this  simpler 
method  of  narration  he  to  some  extent  lost  his 
hold  over  such  of  his  readers  as  were  prone  to  dis 
belief  in  the  supernatural.  And  he  marred  the 
symmetry  of  his  work  when  he  appended  the  four 
or  five  pages  in  which  his  father  was  represented  as 
giving  a  rationalistic  explanation  of  the  mysterious 
events  that  had  just  been  related.  Simms's  read 
ers  could  easily  have  supplied  this  explanation  for 
themselves;  and  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the  critic  in 
the  "Examiner,"  who  may  have  been  Albany  Fon- 
blanque,  could  have  seen  a  "fine  philosophy"  in  a 
process  of  rationalizing  so  perfectly  simple  and  ob 
vious.  But  "  Grayling  "  is  easily  accessible,  and  the 
reader  who  is  sufficiently  interested  in  the  matter 
can  judge  for  himself  as  to  the  merits  of  the  story.1 
1  It  is  given  in  Griswold's  Prose  Writers. 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITEEAET  ACTIVITY.     153 

As  a  whole  "The  "Wigwam  and  Cabin"  was 
a  readable  collection  of  tales  which  deserved  a  fair 
portion  of  the  praise  it  got.  It  was  certainly  bet 
ter  than  any  of  the  similar  volumes  Simras  had 
previously  published,  and  it  surpassed  most  of  the 
collections  of  short  stories  with  which  American 
authors  had  hitherto  favored  their  readers.  Poe 
and  Hawthorne  are  of  course  excepted  from  this 
category,  for  they  were  artists ;  and  Irving,  in  spite 
of  "Rip  Van  Winkle,"  can  hardly  lay  claim  to  the 
title  of  story-writer.  The  book  with  which  it  was 
most  frequently  compared  at  the  time  of  its  publi 
cation  was  Judge  Hall's  "Legends  of  the  West;" 
but  to  this  it  was  manifestly  superior.  The  press 
at  large  joined  with  Poe  in  its  praise,  and  even  the 
sleepy  "North  American  Review"  thought  Simms 
worthy  of  an  article.  Up  to  this  time  it  had  stu 
diously  ignored  him,  while  lauding  much  inferior 
romancers ;  now,  through  the  pen  of  Professor  Fel- 
ton,  it  snubbed  his  more  elaborate  works,  whether  of 
fiction  or  criticism,  but  condescended  to  say  a  few 
pleasant  things  of  "The  Wigwam  and  Cabin." 
Simms  had  had  no  great  love  for  New  England  and 
her  writers  for  some  time,  and  this  article  did  not 
increase  his  affection.  It  was  some  compensation, 
however,  to  find  that  in  less  than  a  year  his  tales 
had  been  translated  into  German,  and  that  soon 
after  this  an  Aberdeen  firm  had  introduced  them  in 
the  mother  country. 

This  chapter  may  be  closed  with  a  brief  account 
of  Simms's  social  life  during  these  laborious  years. 


154  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

It  would  seem  at  first  thought  that  he  must  have 
been  a  mere  writing  machine,  but  this  was  by  no 
means  the  case;  for  he  never  sunk  the  man  in  the 
author,  and  never  forgot  that  there  were  other  peo 
ple  in  the  world  besides  himself.  There  was,  of 
course,  little  to  occupy  him  at  Woodlands  besides 
writing,  and  the  years  were  marked  for  the  house 
hold  by  the  birth  of  a  child  or  the  advent  of  a  less 
permanent  visitor  like  Bryant.  But  death  and 
birth  are  inseparable,  and  Woodlands  was  often 
in  mourning.  Of  the  six  children  born  between 
1839  and  1848,  three  died  in  infancy.  But  the 
fourth  child  was  a  son  who  was  destined  to  live  and 
to  transmit  his  father's  name.  Two  daughters  also 
lived,  Qne  named  Mary  Lawson  in  honor  of 
Simms's  old  friend,  the  other  Chevillette  Eliza, 
after  her  mother. 

In  his  adopted  county  Simms  was  a  marked 
and  well  liked  man.  At  Barnwell  Court-house  he 
had  a  great  admirer  in  Mr.  A.  P.  Aldrich,  an 
able  member  of  the  bar ;  and  a  mile  from  Wood 
lands  lived  Gen.  David  Jamison,  another  friend, 
afterwards  president  of  the  convention  that  took 
South  Carolina  out  of  the  Union.  With  these  two 
gentlemen  Simms  used  to  exchange  frequent  visits ; 
and  many  were  the  glasses  of  hot  whiskey  punch 
consumed,  and  many  were  the  political  discussions 
started,  as  hot  and  intoxicating  as  the  punch,  but 
by  no  means  as  harmless.  Another  warm  friend 
was  James  H.  Hammond,  governor  in  1842  and 
afterwards  United  States  senator.  Simms  and 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     155 

Jamison  used  often  to  ride  over  to  Hammond's 
plantation,  "Silver  Bluff,"  on  the  Savannah 
River;  and  there  more  punch  was  consumed  and 
more  political  scheming  indulged  in.  Hammond 
was  already  looked  up  to  as  one  not  unlikely  to 
take  Calhoun's  place  when  that  great  man  should 
be  gathered  to  his  fathers.  His  orations  and 
pamphlets  were  destined  to  have  considerable  effect 
on  the  public  mind,  but  few  of  them  ever  saw  the 
light  until  they  had  been  submitted  to  Simms  for 
revision. 

About  the  15th  of  May,  the  family  were  accus 
tomed  to  migrate  to  Charleston,  where  Simms 
owned  a  house.  Here  he  found  more  congenial 
society  and  a  less  monotonous  life.  Among  his 
special  friends  were  Dr.  Samuel  Oilman,  the  pas 
tor  of  the  Unitarian  Church,  and  his  better  known 
wife,  Mrs.  Caroline  Gilman,  whose  "Recollections 
of  a  Southern  Matron  "  still  retains  its  value  as  an 
interesting  and  old-fashioned  description  of  a  very 
old-fashioned  society.  To  this  lady's  exemplary 
little  journal,  "The  Southern  Rose,"  Simms  had 
long  ago  been  a  contributor.  Other  friends  were 
J.  Milton  Clapp,  a  man  of  some  scholarship ;  Dr. 
Samuel  Henry  Dickson,  one  of  the  most  cultivated 
physicians  of  the  city:  the  Rev.  James  W.  Miles, 
a  remarkable  instance  of  a  Southern  clergyman 
steeped  in  German  metaphysics ;  William  Porcher 
Miles,  his  brother,  mayor  of  the  city  in  1849,  and 
afterwards  member  of  Congress;  and  finally  the 
witty  Richard  Yeadon,  a  veteran  journalist  and 


156  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

leader  of  the  bar.  There  were,  of  course,  other 
men  of  note  with  whom  he  was  on  terms  of  more 
or  less  friendly  intimacy:  Petigru,  William  J. 
Grayson,  Mitchell  King,  the  eccentric  lawyer,  and 
Col.  A.  H.  Brisbane,  professor  of  belles-lettres  at 
the  Citadel  Academy.  But  with  none  of  these  men 
was  Simms  on  such  terms  of  intimacy  as  he  after 
wards  was  with  a  coterie  of  bright  young  spirits 
which  shall  be  described  in  good  time.  He  was 
too  much  inclined  to  play  the  leader  to  suit  the 
tastes  of  men  of  his  own  age,  and  nowhere  is  this 
Johnsonian  tendency  of  his  better  shown  than  in 
a  little  volume  entitled  "Father  Abbot,"  which  ap 
peared  in  1849.  This  consisted  of  a  series  of  let 
ters  originally  contributed  to  the  "  Mercury,"  and 
published  in  book  form  only  to  oblige  a  firm  of  im 
pecunious  printers.  In  it  Simms  appeared  as  a 
Charlestonian  Christopher  North,  —  Bryant  used 
to  compare  him  to  Wilson  both  in  temperament  and 
in  personal  appearance,  —  the  burden  of  whose 
monologue  was  that  Charlestonians  should  not  race 
North  in  search  of  health  and  scenery  when  they 
could  obtain  all  they  wanted  nearer  home,  on 
Sullivan's  Island,  where  the  officers  stationed  at 
Fort  Moultrie  were  good  hands  at  drawing  a  cork. 
It  should  be  mentioned,  perhaps,  that  Simms 
was  prevented  from  going  North  the  summer  that 
"Father  Abbot"  was  written,  through  fear  of  the 
cholera.1 

1  One  of   the  most  interesting  citizens  of   Charleston  at  this 
period  was  Charles  Fraser  the  painter,  who,  like  his  friend  All- 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITER ABY  ACTIVITY.     157 

Of  these  visits  North,  which  he  so  much  depre 
cated  in  others,  and  against  which  he  wrote  a  vio 
lent  article  in  the  "Southern  Quarterly"  that 
attracted  hostile  criticism,  we  have  only  a  few 
fleeting  memorials  in  the  shape  of  a  letter  or  two 
received  from  Duyckinck  after  his  return,  or  of  a 
stray  personal  notice  in  a  magazine  or  newspaper. 
It  is  known,  however,  that  he  was  a  familiar  figure 
at  literary  receptions,  and  that  he  was  more  or  less 
acquainted  with  all  the  prominent  Knickerbocker 
authors.  With  Halleck  and  Irving  and  Cooper 
his  relations  were  friendly,  but  he  was  probably 
never  intimate  with  them.  He  was  frequently 
thrown,  however,  with  Tuckerman,  Cornelius  Mat- 

ston,  not  infrequently  wrote  some  sweet  verses.  It  is  not  known 
that  Simms  was  at  all  intimate  with  Fraser,  but  they  had  a  brief 
correspondence  on  a  subject  which  is  of  some  interest  to  students 
of  Southern  life  and  manners.  It  illustrates  very  strikingly  the 
growing  feeling  of  hostility  in  Carolina  to  anything  hailing  from 
New  England.  In  one  way  or  another  it  had  been  intimated  to 
Simms  that  Richard  Henry  Dana  the  elder  would  like  to  deliver 
in  Charleston  some  of  his  lectures  on  Shakespeare.  Simms  was 
at  Woodlands  at  the  time,  but  he  entered  enthusiastically  into 
the  project,  and  wrote  at  once  to  Fraser  as  a  prominent  citizen  of 
Charleston,  that  steps  ought  to  be  taken  immediately  to  invite 
Mr.  Dana  to  the  city.  Fraser  wrote  a  very  chilling  reply,  on  De 
cember  20,  1849,  saying  that  Dana's  whole  object  was  to  levy  a 
contribution  on  the  South  "  in  pursuance  of  a  system  in  which  the 
scholar  and  the  mechanic  of  New  England  are  always  alike  happy 
to  exert  their  best  efforts."  He  continued  that  if  Mr.  Dana  came 
he  (Fraser)  might  be  induced  to  go  to  hear  him,  but  he  declined  to 
take  any  part  in  inviting  him.  This  unworthy  treatment  of  one 
man  of  culture  by  another  is  a  sad  proof  of  the  evil  effects  being 
wrought  by  slavery,  and  it  is  all  the  more  curious  when  we  re 
member  that  Dana  was  Washington  Allston's  brother-in-law. 


158  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

thews,  William  A.  Jones,  then  a  prominent  con 
tributor  to  the  "  Democratic  "  and  other  reviews, 
Prosper  M.  Wetmore,  F.  O.  C.  Darley,  C.  F. 
Briggs,  and  the  latter 's  sometime  partner  Edgar 
Allan  Poe.  Of  the  fair  authoresses  whom  Poe 
so  much  affected,  we  hear  little;  but  Duyckinck 
does  occasionally  remind  him  of  Mrs.  Kirkland 
and  Mrs.  Ellet.  In  New  York,  too,  he  was  accus 
tomed  to  meet  some  of  his  Southern  literary  friends 
like  Gayarre  and  Wilde,  and  possibly  Meek. 

There  is  no  need  to  waste  space  conjecturing 
how  he  spent  his  time  while  on  these  trips.  They 
were  not  all  holiday,  for  he  invariably  had  proofs 
to  correct.  Parke  Godwin  tells  us  that  he  used 
often  to  drop  into  Bryant's  office,  and  there  en 
deavor  to  convince  all  who  would  listen  to  him 
that  slavery  was  a  much  slandered  institution. 
He  also  made  New  York  a  centre  from  which  to 
make  excursions  to  Nahant  and  Rockaway;  to 
Great  Barrington,  where  his  eldest  daughter  was 
at  school;  and  to  Poughkeepsie,  where  he  vis 
ited  William  Wilson  the  poet-publisher,  whose 
son,  General  James  Grant  Wilson,  has  pleasantly 
described  a  drive  which  he  took  with  Simms  and 
Duyckinck  to  visit  the  retired  Paulding  at  "Pla- 
centia."  1 

But  perhaps  the  relations  of  Simms  with  the  only 
Southern  man  of  letters  who  was  his  superior  will 
be  of  more  interest  than  his  relations  with  the 

1  This  visit  took  place  in  1854,  but  the  date  is  of  little  conse 
quence.    See  Appleton's  Cycl.  Am.  Biog.  art.  Paulding. 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITER ABY  ACTIVITY.     159 

Knickerbocker  writers,  and  they  are  certainly  more 
fully  recorded.  After  a  stinging  review  of  "  The 
Partisan,"  Poe  seems  to  have  paid  little  attention 
to  Simms  until,  as  editor  of  "Graham's,"  in  1841, 
he  wrote  or  else  allowed  to  be  published  a  very 
favorable  notice  of  "The  Kinsmen,"  in  which  that 
romance  was  proclaimed  to  be  the  best  that  had 
been  published  in  America  since  "The  Pathfind 
er."  In  1844,  he  devoted  a  few  sentences  to  Simms 
in  the  scrappy  "Marginalia  "  he  was  publishing  in 
the  "Democratic  Review."  Simms  had  evidently 
risen  greatly  in  his  estimation,  for  he  wrote:  "Mr. 
Simms  has  abundant  faults  —  or  had ;  among  which 
inaccurate  English,  a  proneness  to  revolting  images, 
and  pet  phrases  are  the  most  noticeable.  Nev 
ertheless,  leaving  out  of  the  question  Brockden 
Brown  and  Hawthorne  (who  are  each  a  genus\  he 
is  immeasurably  the  best  writer  of  fiction  in  Amer 
ica.  He  has  more  vigor,  more  imagination,  more 
movement,  and  more  general  capacity  than  all 
our  novelists  (save  Cooper)  combined."1  Poe  has 
sometimes  been  accused  of  unduly  favoring  South 
ern  writers ;  but  there  can  be  little  question  that 
he  really  believed  what  he  said  of  Simms. 

In  18452  Poe  appeared  as  a  still  more  zealous 
champion  of  our  romancer.  He  was  now  editing 
the  "Broadway  Journal"  on  his  own  responsibil- 

1  I  follow  the  reprint  in  Foe's  Works  (N.  Y.  1871),  vol.  iii. 
p.  510. 

2  About  this  time  Poe  must  have  met  Simms  frequently  at  the 
house  of  their  common  friend,  Lawson. 


160  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

ity,  Briggs  having  withdrawn,  and  he  was  very 
anxious  to  secure  contributors  and  subscribers. 
He  evidently  recognized  Sirams's  influence,  espe 
cially  in  the  South,  and  made  a  dead  set  to  capture 
him.  Every  time  he  could  decently  do  so  he  wrote 
an  enthusiastic  notice  of  "Simms's  Magazine," 
carefully  selecting  for  praise  articles  which  he 
must  have  shrewdly  suspected  to  have  been  written 
by  Simms.  He  did  not  stop  here.  William  A. 
Jones  had  written  a  paper  for  the  "Democratic" 
on  "American  Humor,"  in  which  he  spoke  dispar 
agingly  of  Simms's  romantic  and  poetic  efforts. 
Poe  replied  to  him  in  one  of  those  stinging  pieces 
of  personal  criticism  which  he  alone  could  write. 
Then  "The  Wigwam  and  Cabin"  appeared,  and 
he  seized  the  opportunity  to  write  a  long  and  ap 
preciative  review  of  Simms's  work  in  general,  an 
nouncing  at  the  same  time,  in  more  than  one  num 
ber,  that  Simms  would  be  a  regular  contributor  to 
the  "Journal."  But  an  unknown  writer  in  the 
"Mirror"  dared  to  criticise  Poe  for  his  attempt 
to  make  out  that  Simms  was  a  better  writer  than 
Cooper  or  Brockden  Brown  (which,  in  the  case  of 
the  latter  at  least,  he  had  not  done),  and  Poe  again 
took  up  the  cudgels,  evaded  the  main  issue,  and 
went  off  in  a  tirade  against  Fay's  "Norman  Les 
lie,"  and  the  smallness  of  the  Mr.  Asterisk  who 
had  dared  to  criticise  him  in  the  "Mirror."  In 
the  mean  time  the  subject  of  all  this  praise  was  re 
paying  his  upholder  by  publishing  in  the  "Jour- 
nal "  some  of  the  trashiest  of  his  shorter  poems. 


NEW  PHASES  OF  LITERARY  ACTIVITY.     161 

Up  to  the  last  issue  of  the  paper,  Poe  continued  his 
praise  and  Simms  his  sonnets  and  epigrams.  It 
is  almost  impossible  not  to  believe  that  Poe  was 
trying  by  every  means  in  his  power  to  secure 
Simms's  friendship.  What  he  expected  to  get  in 
return,  except  poor  sonnets  and  small  patronage,  is 
doubtful ;  but  it  is  at  least  certain  that  Simms  was 
never  so  continuously  puffed  in  his  life  as  in  the  two 
volumes  of  the  "Broadway  Journal  "  for  the  year 
1845.  Poe  subsequently  republished  in  "  Godey  " 1 
his  review  of  "The  Wigwam  and  Cabin,"  and  he 
doubtless,  to  the  day  of  his  death,  stood  by  his 
protege,  Simms  on  his  part  retaining  warm  memo 
ries  of  his  able  and  eccentric  critic. 

1  See  also  Poe's  Works,  yol.  iii.  pp.  272-6. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

ROMANTIC    DREAMS    AND   POLITICAL    NIGHTMARES. 

DURING  the  twelve  years  from  1850  to  1861  in 
clusive,  Simms  lived  in  two  very  different  worlds. 
In  both  he  dreamed  dreams  and  saw  visions,  the 
difference  between  which  has  been  briefly  indicated 
in  the  heading  of  this  chapter.  He  went  back  to 
his  old  trade  of  romance  writing,  and  added  sub 
stantially  to  the  reputation  he  had  already  ac 
quired;  he  went  forward  with  the  rasher  spirits 
of  his  section,  and  floundered  about  in  the  bogs  of 
doctrinaire  politics,  in  the  most  horrible  world 
of  political  nightmares  that  had  lured  a  brave  peo 
ple  on  to  their  destruction,  since  the  days  of  the 
French  Revolution.  It  will  be  necessary,  there 
fore,  for  his  biographer  to  pass  and  repass  between 
these  different  worlds;  and  if  he  must  regret  the 
time  that  has  to  be  spent  in  the  world  of  night 
mares,  he  will  at  least  be  able  to  derive  some  satis 
faction  —  and  he  trusts  that  the  same  will  be  the 
case  with  his  readers  —  from  his  sojourn,  temporary 
and  fleeting  though  it  be,  in  the  world  of  romance. 
But  as  a  bad  beginning  makes  a  good  ending,  it 
may  be  as  well  to  begin  with  the  nightmares ;  and 
if  the  reader  wonders  how  any  good  can  come  out 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     163 

of  nightmares,  he  is  requested  to  preserve  his  pa 
tience  for  a  while. 

When,  in  the  early  months  of  1849,  Simms  al 
lowed  the  gentlemen  proprietors  of  the  "  Southern 
Quarterly  Review  "  to  engage  his  services  as  ed 
itor,  at  the  small  salary  of  one  thousand  dollars,  he 
knew  very  well  that  he  was  making  a  rash  experi 
ment,  but  he  also  knew  very  well  what  he  proposed 
to  do.  He  knew  that  as  his  salary  was  guaranteed 
by  the  publisher  only,  a  man  in  wretched  health 
and  notoriously  impecunious,  it  was  not  likely  that 
he  would  see  a  penny  of  his  money;  he  knew  also 
that  he  would  have  infinite  difficulty  in  securing 
contributors  and  subscribers,  and  that  all  the  short 
comings  of  the  review  would  be  fathered  upon  him. 
But  he  still  felt  sure  that  the  cause  of  the  South, 
which  he  believed  in  with  all  the  intensity  of  his 
nature,  needed  a  weighty  organ,  and  he  felt  in  him 
self  an  indomitable  energy  that  would  overcome 
many  obstacles.  In  all  this  he  judged  wisely. 
The  publisher  did  die  in  a  year  heavily  in  his  debt. 
Contributors  and  subscribers  were  hard  to  get,  and 
they  showered  letters  upon  him  complaining  of  ty 
pographical  mistakes  in  their  uninteresting  articles, 
of  the  fact  that  their  copies  were  lost  in  the  mails, 
or  never  sent  from  Charleston,  and  of  a  thousand 
other  small  matters  for  which  Simms  was  not  re 
sponsible.  If  the  publishers  neglected  to  answer  a 
letter  (and  they  did  things  in  a  slipshod  way  in  the 
printing  offices  of  slow-going  Charleston),  Simms 
was  immediately  attacked  for  it,  although  at  the 


164  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

time  he  was  far  away  at  Woodlands,  cudgeling  his 
brains  for  the  four  or  five  articles  he  needed  to 
make  up  the  contents  of  a  review  that  seldom  con 
tained  more  than  ten. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  these  difficulties,  he 
achieved  something  like  success,  certainly  greater 
success  than  would  have  attended  the  labors  of  any 
other  man  in  the  South.  He  took  the  review  when 
it  had  reached  a  condition  of  worthlessness  not 
easily  to  be  conceived.  In  two  years  he  had  made 
it  a  very  respectable  publication,  comparing  not 
unfavorably  with  its  Boston  contemporary,  the 
"North  American."  From  paying  nothing  to  his 
contributors,  he  advanced  to  the  almost  unheard- 
of  extravagance  of  paying  the  best  of  them  a  dollar 
a.  page.  It  is  true  that  the  new  publishers  often 
dishonored  the  drafts  drawn  on  them  by  eager  con 
tributors,  —  a  proceeding  which  drew  down  on 
Simms's  head  vials  of  wrath,  — but  still  some  pay 
ments  were  made,  and  the  quality  of  the  articles 
improved  accordingly.  He  himself  got  part  of  his 
salary  in  money  and  part  in  the  free  printing  of 
his  books  and  pamphlets.  And  all  the  while  he 
managed,  if  not  to  satisfy,  at  least  not  to  alienate 
the  thirty-six  gentlemen  proprietors. 

His  first  proceeding  was  to  obtain  contributors ; 
and  in  this  undertaking  his  large  acquaintance 
with  the  leading  men  of  all  sections  stood  him  in 
good  stead.  His  main  dependence  was,  of  course, 
on  South  Carolina.  From  that  State  he  got  prom 
ises  of  assistance  from  ex-Governor  Hammond  and 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     165 

his  brother,  M.  C.  M.  Hammond  (a  major  in  the 
Mexican  war,  whose  articles  upon  the  noted  bat 
tles  of  that  unjust  struggle  were  a  chief  feature  of 
the  review),  from  Poinsett,  Mitchell  King,  Lieber, 
Grayson,  De  Bow,  Jamison,  Colonel  and  Mrs.  D. 
J.  McCord,  Father  P.  N.  Lynch  (a  well-known 
and  cultivated  Charleston  priest  and  afterwards 
bishop),  Rev.  James  W.  and  William  Porcher 
Miles,  William  H.  Trescot,  B.  F.  Perry,  Profes 
sor  Fred  A.  Porcher,  Dr.  R.  W.  Gibbes,  the  an 
tiquarian,  and  others  of  less  note.  Most  of  these 
gentlemen  kept  their  promises  and  some  were  vo 
luminous  contributors.  From  Alabama  came  John 
A.  Campbell,  afterwards  associate  justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  Chancellor  J. 
W.  Lesesne,  A.  B.  Meek,  journalist  and  poet,  B. 
F.  Porter,  and  Dr.  Nott,  the  ethnologist.  Georgia 
furnished  Henry  R.  Jackson ;  Florida,  William  H. 
Simmons;  Mississippi,  Dr.  J.  W.  Cartwright; 
Missouri,  W.  G.  Minor;  and  Virginia,  her  great 
apostle  of  secession,  Beverley  Tucker.  A  few  bet 
ter  known  names,  and  not  confined  to  the  South, 
were  those  of  M.  F.  Maury,  Brantz  Mayer,  Pro 
fessor  George  Frederick  Holmes,  Henry  T.  Tucker- 
man,  and  William  A.  Jones. 

As  most  of  the  articles  that  appeared  in  the 
"Southern  Quarterly"  were  unsigned,  it  is  impos 
sible  to  say  whether  all  these  gentlemen  were  actual 
contributors;  but  from  stray  information  gleaned 
from  Simms's  correspondence,  it  is  certain  that 
most  of  them  were.  It  will  be  observed  that  Bev- 


166  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

erley  Tucker's  is  almost  the  only  name  that  is 
thoroughly  identified  with  the  cause  of  secession ; 
but  the  teachings  of  the  review  were  none  the  less 
directed  towards  this  end.  Simms  did  not,  in 
deed,  go  as  far  as  Tucker  tried  to  push  him,  but 
he  went  far  enough.  The  absence  of  Calhoun's 
name  is  no  matter  of  surprise,  for  his  race  was 
soon  to  be  run;  and  if  it  appears  to  be  singular 
that  neither  Yancey,  nor  Toombs,  nor  Stephens, 
nor  Davis,  nor  R.  M.  T.  Hunter  is  known  to  have 
written  for  so  pronounced  a  Southern  organ,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  some  of  these  gentlemen 
were  by  no  means  eager  for  secession  at  any  tune, 
certainly  not  at  this,  and  also  that  they  very  prob 
ably  had  the  politician's  fear  of  the  pitfalls  that 
await  the  unwary  rusher  into  print.  Hunter,  in 
deed,  promised  Calhoun  to  write  for  the  review, 
but  he  does  not  appear  to  have  kept  his  promise. 
The  great  leader  could  make  no  such  promise,  but 
he  interested  himself  in  getting  other  contribu 
tors,  and  he  wrote  Simms  a  very  complimentary 
letter  upon  the  latter 's  assumption  of  his  editorial 
duties.  Simms,  it  may  be  remarked  here,  had  all 
a  South  Carolinian's  veneration  for  Calhoun,  al 
though  he  thought  that  the  senator's  great  genius 
had  overshadowed  and  blighted  the  individual  prom 
ise  of  some  of  the  younger  public  men  of  the  State. 
On  one  occasion  at  least  he  was  favored  with  a  sight 
of  one  of  those  mysterious  letters  which  Calhoun 
was  in  the  habit  of  inditing  to  his  political  follow 
ers.  This  letter  came  through  Colonel  Brisbane, 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     167 

who  commented  upon  it  as  follows:  "Of  course 
you  will  be  discreet,  as  he  requests,  with  his  name, 
but  do  study  the  matter.  It  will  never  do  to  be 
treated  of  in  print,  but  we  should  know  the  worst, 
who  have  to  guide  and  calm  [sic]  particularly  the 
public  mind.  Truly,  the  world  is  deranged.  The 
poor  Pope,  the  poor  French,  the  poor  everybody, 
but  worst  [sic]  than  all,  the  poor  Americans.  Are 
we  to  fall  asunder?  Do  return  these  epistles." 

But  how  had  the  Union  editor  of  1832  become 
the  disunion  editor  of  1849?  The  answer  can  be 
given  in  one  word,  slavery.  Simms,  like  nearly 
all  the  rest  of  his  party,  had  held  in  1832  that  seces 
sion  was  an  ultimate  right  belonging  to  every 
State,  but  one  to  be  used  in  dire  emergencies  only. 
He  had  not  thought  the  "tariff  of  abominations" 
a  sufficient  cause  for  secession,  or  even  for  nullifi 
cation  ;  but  now  he  thought  that  slavery  was  doomed 
in  the  Union,  and  that  it  must  be  preserved  as  a 
peculiar  institution  of  the  South,  therefore  the  ob 
vious  inference  was  that  a  dire  emergency  had 
come,  and  that  the  Southern  States  must  secede. 
That  secession  was  wrong  in  itself  was  a  fact  that 
could  find  no  lodgment  in  his  brain  or  in  that  of 
any  other  typical  Southerner.  The  reason  for  this 
inability  to  see*  clearly  what  is  so  obvious  now  to 
any  tyro  in  the  theory  of  politics,  is  to  be  found  in 
the  fact  that  the  South  was  inhabited  by  a  primi 
tive  people.  The  right  of  secession  would  have 
been  disputed  by  few  leaders  of  opinion  in  1789; 
it  had  been  alluded  to  by  Izard  in  the  first  session 


168  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

of  the  first  Congress ;  it  had  been  appealed  to  by 
States  north,  east,  and  west,  during  the  first  years 
of  the  government.  It  would  have  been  marvelous 
if  the  states-rights  doctrine  had  not  been  firmly 
held  during  the  days  when  the  advantages  of  union 
were  little  known,  when  the  States  had  a  mutual 
distrust  of  one  another,  and  when  there  was  prac 
tically  no  national  feeling  except  against  foreign 
ers.  Besides,  the  states-rights  doctrine  was  in 
many  respects  but  another  name  for  the  doctrine  of 
strict  construction,  —  a  doctrine  sure  to  be  preached 
by  whatever  party  happened  to  be  out  of  power. 
But  a  doctrine  that  could  be  naturally  held  by  a 
Southerner  in  1789  could  be  naturally  held  by  a 
Southerner  in  1850.  It  was  merely  an  instance  of 
a  "survival,"  not  of  the  fittest.  The  fact  has  been 
frequently  pointed  out  that  Southern  men  could 
think  only  along  certain  grooves,  and  that  hence 
their  opinions  were  liable  to  change  only  with  re 
spect  to  the  intensity  of  conviction  of  those  who 
held  them.  Therefore  the  Southerner  of  1850  not 
only  clung  to  the  states-rights  doctrine,  but  believed 
in  it  with  a  greater  degree  of  conviction  than  his 
ancestor  of  1789. 

On  the  other  hand  the  particularistic  tendencies 
of  the  Northern  States  had  been  more  or  less  coun 
teracted  by  frequent  intercourse  with  one  another, 
due  to  the  extension  of  commerce  and  public  high 
ways.  Whatever  was  done  for  the  moral,  mental, 
?md  material  progress  of  one  State  was  practically 
done  for  them  all.  The  New  Englander,  too,  be- 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     169 

came  an  emigrant  to  what  was  then  the  West,  and 
he  carried  with  him  a  stock  of  religious  and  politi 
cal  ideas  that  acted  as  a  leaven  to  public  opinion 
wherever  he  took  up  his  abode.  North  of  Mason 
and  Dixon's  line,  then,  there  was  such  a  thing  as 
a  national  feeling,  and  hence  the  Northerner  of 
1850  thought  very  differently  on  political  subjects 
from  his  ancestor  of  1789. 

In  the  South  there  was  only  one  thing  that  knit 
the  several  States  together,  and  that  was  slavery. 
Virginia,  indeed,  helped  to  populate  some  of  her 
more  southerly  sisters,  and  was  therefore  somewhat 
venerated  by  them ;  and  the  best  families  in  each 
State  knew  one  another,  and  sometimes  intermar 
ried.  Still,  as  a  rule,  each  State  cared  for  itself  and 
thought  no  great  deal  of  its  neighbor.  Even  now 
there  are  abundant  traces  of  this  insular  feeling 
to  be  discovered,  although  it  does  not  often  get 
into  print.  Yet  States  knit  together  by  slavery 
could  not  develop  a  true  national  feeling;  for 
that  there  must  be  a  consciousness  of  progress,  a 
desire  to  share  in  and  -further  a  common  civiliza 
tion.  But  progress  and  slavery  are  natural  ene 
mies,  and  the  South  had  no  great  desire  to  progress 
except  in  her  own  way,  which  was  really  retrogres 
sion.  True,  Southern  statesmen  had  done  much 
to  found  the  Union,  and  even  Calhoun  himself  was 
always  a  Union  man.  Nevertheless,  they  wanted  a 
Union  in  which  they  could  be  masters,  or  in  which 
they  would  be  allowed  to  preserve  their  own  cus 
toms  and  institutions.  In  other  words,  they  wanted 


170  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

a  hegemony  or  an  anarchic  confederacy,  not  a  na 
tion.  Geographical  and  racial  and  other  consider 
ations  demanded,  however,  that  we  should  become 
a  nation,  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  Zeitgeist,  —  and 
a  nation  we  became  accordingly. 

All  this  is  trite  enough,  but  it  has  to  be  insisted 
on  in  order  that  we  may  understand  how  natural 
it  was  that  Simms  should  be  able  to  call  himself 
at  one  time  a  Union  and  states-rights  man  and  at 
another  time  a  states-rights  man  anxious  to  get  out 
of  the  Union.1  The  Union  was  not  a  nation  to 
him,  and  from  the  nature  of  things  it  could  not  be. 
It  had  been  founded  on  a  compact,  and  he  could 
not  see  how  it  could  have  grown  into  a  nation. 
Even  Webster  himself  had  not  been  clear  on  this 
point,  and  had  argued  in  the  teeth  of  history 
against  the  theory  of  compact,  because  he  could  not 
shut  his  eyes  to  the  fact  that  in  the  North,  East, 
and  West  we  really  were  a  nation.  What  puz 
zled  Webster  was  certainly  enough  to  puzzle 
Simms ;  and  because  we  of  the  present  day  under 
stand  our  constitutional  history  better  than  they 
did,  is  no  reason  for  our  concluding  that  either 
could  have  judged  more  wisely  with  the  light  he 
had.  They  lived  in  a  transition  time,  and  Web 
ster  had  his  eyes  toward  the  future,  while  Simms 
looked  back  at  the  past.  Both  were  products  of 
their  time  and  section,  and  if  we  do  praise  the  one, 
we  should  think  twice  before  we  blame  the  other. 

1  That  it  was  the  slavery  question  which  in  a  few  years  turned 
anti-nullifiers  into  violent  secessionists  will  be  plain  to  any  one 
who  makes  a  careful  study  of  Legare"s  letters  and  speeches. 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     171 

Now  if  it  was  natural  for  Simms  to  believe  in  the 
right  of  secession,  it  was  equally  natural  for  him 
to  believe  that  the  South  could  not  exist  without 
slavery;  and,  as  he  saw  plainly  that  slavery  was 
doomed  in  the  Union,  he  had  a  logical  reason  for 
urging  instant  secession.  His  belief  in  the  ne 
cessity  of  preserving  slavery  was  as  erroneous  as 
his  belief  in  the  right  of  secession ;  but  he  should 
not  be  blamed  for  the  one  any  more  than  for  the 
other.  It  has  been  shown  in  a  previous  chapter 
that  the  advanced  views  of  the  great  Virginian 
statesmen  on  the  evils  of  slavery  could  not  have  ex 
erted  any  profound  influence  upon  their  section.1 
Those  views  had  never  been  largely  shared  by  the 
politicians  of  the  more  southerly  States ;  and  now 
when  Virginia  was  in  her  decadence,  it  was  only 
natural  that  a  fiery  little  State,  which  had  never 
liked  her  lack  of  importance  in  the  Union,  should 
come  forward  proclaiming  in  trumpet  tones  that 
wrong  was  right,  and  that  if  the  rest  of  the  world 
did  not  like  the  proposition,  South  Carolina  was 
ready  to  fight  for  it. 

Of  course  what  was  wrong  to  the  great  Virgin 
ian  leaders  and  to  the  States  of  the  North  and  the 
nations  of  Europe  was  right  to  South  Carolina. 
Slavery  was  an  institution  coeval  with  the  com 
monwealth  itself.  There  were  more  slaves  than 
freemen,  and  some  little  experience  had  been  had 
of  slave  insurrections.  The  negro  had  thriven  in 
South  Carolina,  and  it  was  evident  that  he  was 

1  The  opposition  to  slavery  in  the  Virginia  Convention  in  1829- 
30,  came  chiefly  from  what  is  now  West  Virginia. 


172  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

there  to  stay ;  but  if  the  schemes  of  the  abolition 
ists  were  carried  out  what  was  to  become  of  him? 
He  could  not  be  received  as  the  equal  of  his  former 
master;  and  if  left  to  himself,  he  would  speedily 
sink  into  barbarism,  or  become  dependent  on  the 
State  for  his  support.  So  argued  the  South  Caro 
linian,  and  the  more  he  read  abolition  tracts  the 
angrier  he  got.  But  Washington  and  Jefferson 
had  argued  that  slavery  was  morally  wrong.  If 
that  were  so,  then  the  South  ought  to  liberate 
her  slaves  instantly.  She  was  not  prepared  to  do 
this,  therefore  slavery  must  be  right.  This  was  a 
horrible  perversion  of  logic,  and  if  all  men  were 
wont  at  all  times  to  argue  thus,  this  earth  would 
soon  be  a  hell;  but  there  were  certainly  many 
things  that  conspired  to  blind  these  advocates  of  the 
divine  origin  of  slavery,  and  now  that  slavery  is 
a  thing  of  the  past,  we  can  afford  not  to  be  too 
severe  in  our  strictures. 

Perhaps  it  will  be  as  well,  however,  to  let  Simms 
speak  for  himself  on  some  of  these  points.  He 
had  made  up  his  own  mind  as  to  the  course  to  be 
pursued  with  reference  to  slavery  ever  since  the 
publication  of  his  review  of  Miss  Martineau  in 
1837.  In  that  publication  he  had  agreed  with 
many  of  the  English  traveler's  remarks  on  the 
low  tone  of  morals  occasioned  by  slavery,  and  had 
expressed  his  regret  at  the  passage  of  laws  by 
South  Carolina  against  the  freeing  of  slaves.  Yet 
while  he  was  willing  to  see  the  institution  of  slavery 
amended,  he  could  not  for  a  moment  contemplate 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     173 

its  abolition.  The  South  must  calmly  and  cour 
teously  explain  to  the  North  how  the  case  stood, 
and  perhaps  all  would  be  well.  It  was  to  be  re 
gretted,  however,  that  the  slave-trade  had  been  for 
bidden  instead  of  being  regulated.  The  idea  that 
it  was  wrong  to  hold  a  human  being  in  bondage 
had  gained  no  entrance  into  his  mind. 

A  few  years  later  we  find  him  a  little  more  anx 
ious  about  his  favorite  institution ;  but  he  dreams 
of  a  perpetual  series  of  balances  between  North 
and  South  by  means  of  the  wild  conquests  that 
have  already  been  described,  and  he  contents  him 
self  with  an  occasional  threat  of  disunion  if  these 
precious  schemes  are  not  carried  out.  Now  after 
the  squabbles  over  the  territory  acquired  from 
Mexico,  he  resigns  his  schemes  for  the  preservation 
of  the  Union,  and  boldly  challenges  the  rest  of  the 
world  to  admire  and  fear  the  South.  Disunion  is 
inevitable,  but  before  the  step  is  taken,  the  South 
must  vindicate  herself  at  every  point.  Accord 
ingly  he  writes  in  the  "Southern  Quarterly"  for 
January,  1852: — 9 

"  We  beg,  once  for  all,  to  say  to  our  Northern 
readers,  writers,  and  publishers,  that,  in  the  South, 
we  hold  slavery  to  be  an  especially  and  wisely  de 
vised  institution  of  heaven ;  devised  for  the  benefit, 
the  improvement,  and  safety,  morally,  socially,  and 
physically,  of  a  barbarous  and  inferior  race,  who 
would  otherwise  perish  by  famine  or  by  filth,  by 
the  sword,  by  disease,  by  waste,  and  destinies  for 
ever  gnawing,  consuming,  and  finally  destroying." 


174  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

A  year  later  he  writes  in  the  same  periodical :  — • 
"If  it  be  admitted  that  the  institution  of  negro 
slavery  is  a  wrong  done  to  the  negro,  the  question 
is  at  an  end.  No  people  can  be  justified  for  con 
tinuance  in  error  and  injustice.  Once  admit  that 
there  is  a  wrong  and  a  crime,  and  it  must  be  fol 
lowed  by  expiation  and  atonement.  In  the  South 
we  think  otherwise.  We  hold  the  African  under 
moral  and  just  titles,  founded  upon  his  characteris 
tics,  his  nature,  his  necessities  and  our  own ;  and 
our  accountability  is  to  the  God  of  both  races. 
We,  alone,  are  in  possession  of  the  facts  in  the  case, 
and  our  consciences  are  in  no  way  troubled  in  rela 
tion  to  our  rights  to  hold  the  negro  in  bondage. 
Perhaps  our  consciences  are  a  thought  too  easy; 
but  we  believe  ourselves  quite  equal  to  the  argu 
ment  whenever  we  appear  before  the  proper  tribu 
nal.  But  we  are  a  people,  a  nation,  with  arms  in 
our  hands,  and  in  sufficient  numbers  to  compel  the 
respect  of  other  nations ;  and  we  shall  never  submit 
the  case  to  the  judgment  of  another  people,  until 
they  show  themselves  of  superior  virtue  and  intel 
lect." 

All  this  is  nightmarish  enough,  but  it  seems  tame 
compared,  with  a  few  other  utterances  which  are  ap 
pended  in  order  to  show  that  Simms  was  not  the 
only  or  the  most  extreme  instance  of  a  Southerner 
tortured  by  nightmares.  In  January,  1853,  he 
allowed  one  of  his  regular  contributors,  Mrs.  D.  J. 
McCord,  perhaps  the  ablest  woman  of  her  day  in 
the  South,  to  review  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  for 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     175 

the  "Southern  Quarterly."  He  himself  had  been 
requested  by  a  Philadelphia  firm  to  write  a  ro 
mance  of  Southern  life  which  should  serve  as  an 
answer  to  that  great  book;  but  he  had  shown  his 
good  sense  by  declining  to  give  any  such  opportu 
nity  to  the  world  at  large  to  indulge  in  invidious 
comparisons.  He  preferred  the  seemingly  poetic 
justice  of  having  the  Northern  woman  answered  by 
a  Southern  woman;  but  how  could  he  help  feeling 
the  weakness  of  an  answer  which  ended  with  such 
a  statement  as  the  following?  "Christian  slavery, 
in  its  full  development,  free  from  the  fretting 
annoyance  and  galling  bitterness  of  abolition  in 
terference,  is  the  brightest  sunbeam  which  Om 
niscience  has  destined  for  his  [i.  e.  the  negro's] 
existence." 

The  next  quotation  is  a  poetical  one,  taken  from 
Mr.  William  J.  Grayson's  "The  Hireling  and  the 
Slave,"  a  work  which  should  be  studied  by  all  those 
who  are  interested  in  determining  what  is  the  great 
est  extent  of  aberration  allowed  to  a  sane  and  cul 
tivated  mind.  It  is  fair  to  say  that  the  italics  are 
my  own. 

"  Hence  is  the  negro  brought  by  God's  command 
For  -wiser  teaching,  to  a  foreign  land  ; 
If  they  who  brought  him  were  by  Mammon  driven, 
Still  have  they  served,  blind  instruments  of  heaven; 
And  though  the  way  be  rough,  the  agent  stern, 
No  better  mode,  can  human  wits  discern, 
No  happier  system,  wealth  or  virtue  find, 
To  tame  and  elevate  the  negro  mind  : 
Thus  mortal  purposes  —  whate'er  their  mood, 
Are  only  means  with  Heaven  for  working  good ; 


176  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

And  wisest  they  who  labor  to  fulfil 

With  zeal  and  hope,  the  all  directing  Will.1' 

But  if  Mrs.  McCord  thought  highly  of  the  ne 
gro's  lot,  the  author  of  the  following  sentence  was 
equally  satisfied  with  the  condition  of  the  master : 
"I  venture  to  affirm  that  there  are  no  men,  at  any 
point  upon  the  surface  of  this  earth,  so  favored  in 
their  lot,  so  elevated  in  their  natures,  so  just  in 
their  duties,  so  up  to  the  emergencies  and  so  ready 
for  the  trials  of  their  lives,  as  are  the  six  million 
masters  in  the  Southern  States." 

It  will  hardly  surprise  the  reader  to  learn  that 
this  description  of  a  new  Utopia,  lying  to  the  south 
of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line,  was  inserted  in  a  speech 
delivered  by  a  gentleman  of  Charleston,  before  the 
South  Carolina  legislature,  on  the  propriety  of  re 
opening  the  foreign  slave  trade. 

But  these  quotations  from  printed  sources  are  by 
no  means  so  interesting  or  so  valuable  as  some  ex 
cerpts  that  may  be  given  from  a  correspondence 
that  has  never  yet  been  published.  Among  the 
first  persons  to  whom  Simms  applied  for  contribu 
tions  for  his  review  was  Beverley  Tucker,  of  Vir 
ginia.  Tucker  was  then  (1849)  sixty -five  years  old, 
and  within  two  years  of  his  death.  The  half-bro 
ther  of  John  Randolph,  of  Roanoke,  he  displayed 
many  of  the  qualities  of  that  eccentric  genius  and 
came  largely  under  his  influence.  After  practicing 
law  and  serving  as  circuit  judge  in  Missouri,  he 
returned  to  Virginia,  and  was  in  1834  elected  to 
the  chair  of  law  in  William  and  Mary  College,  a 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     177 

position  which  he  held  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  and 
in  which  he  exercised  great  influence  on  the  rising 
generation.  His  Missouri  experiences  furnished 
him  with  material  for  his  first  novel,  "  George  Bal- 
combe,"  a  work  which  Poe  and  Simms  praised 
highly,  and  which  with  a  little  more  care  might  have 
been  made  a  success.  His  remarkable  and  almost 
prophetic  "Partisan  Leader"  is  too  well  known 
to  require  comment.  But  his  chief  influence  on 
his  generation  was  exerted  by  means  of  his  lectures 
and  by  his  correspondence  with  public  men.  In 
his  extreme  and  able  advocacy  of  states-rights  doc 
trines  his  career  parallels  to  some  extent  that  of 
Judge  William  Smith,  of  South  Carolina,  to  whom 
reference  was  made  in  a  former  chapter. 

Simms  had  no  personal  knowledge  of  Tucker, 
but  he  admired  the  latter 's  novels,  and  he  felt  that 
the  old  professor  would  sympathize  with  the  polit 
ical  objects  of  the  "Quarterly."  He  did  not  mis 
take  his  man ;  for  Tucker  was  until  his  death  the 
ablest  supporter  the  review  had,  and  moreover  he 
became  one  of  Simms 's  warmest  friends. 

Many  letters  passed  between  them,  most  of  which 
have  been  preserved.  They  met  only  once,  in  the 
summer  of  1851,  at  Richmond;  but  they  poured 
out  their  hopes  and  fears  in  their  letters  as  though 
they  had  known  each  other  for  years.  Both  were 
fluent  and  characteristic  letter  writers,  and  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  some  day  the  portion  of  their  corre 
spondence  which  survives  may  be  given  to  the  pub 
lic.  The  scope  of  this  work  precludes  anything  but 
extracts. 


178  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

On  January  30,  1850,  Simms  wrote  from 
Woodlands,  whither  he  had  just  returned  from  a 
visit,  with  Jamison,  to  Hammond.  After  describ 
ing  how  they  had  drunk  Tucker's  health,  he  went 
on  as  follows :  — 

"  We  greatly  wished  for  your  presence,  and  con 
cluded  with  the  congratulatory  thought  that  the 
formation  of  the  new  republic  would  bring  us  won 
derfully  nearer  to  one  another.  The  idea  grows 
upon  us  rapidly,  and  we  are  pleased  to  think  upon 
the  Southern  people.  I  have  long  since  regarded 
the  separation  as  a  now  inevitable  necessity.  The 
Union  depends  wholly  upon  the  sympathies  of  the 
contracting  parties,  and  these  are  lost  entirely.  I 
have  no  hope  and  no  faith  in  compromises  of  any 
kind;  and  am  not  willing  to  be  gulled  by  them  any 
longer.  Any  compromise  now,  the  parties  know 
ing  thoroughly  the  temper  of  each,  must  originate 
in  cowardice  and  a  mean  spirit  of  evasion  on  the 
part  of  the  South,  and  in  a  spirit  of  fraud  and  de 
liberately  purposed  wrong  on  that  of  the  North. 
Yet  you  will  see  that  Cass  and  Clay,  still  having 
the  flesh-pots  in  their  eye[s],  will  equally  aim  at 
some  miserable  paltering  to  stave  off  the  difficulty, 
and  be  called  a  compromise,  upon  which  they  are 
[to]  found  their  new  claims  to  the  presidency. 
These  scoundrelly  professional  politicians  are  at 
the  bottom  of  all  our  troubles." 

He  then  goes  on  to  say  how  these  matters  are 
being  discussed  all  over  the  South,  and  alludes  to 
the  proposed  Nashville  convention,  at  which  Ham- 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     179 

mond  hoped  to  meet  Tucker.  Simms  himself  'had 
been  proposed  as  a  delegate,  but  had  discouraged 
the  use  of  his  name.  In  this  connection  he  re 
marked,  "I  regard  the  Southern  convention  as  in 
fact  a  Southern  confederacy.  To  become  the  one 
it  seems  tome  very  certain  is  to  become  the  other." 
A  fortnight  later,  he  writes  with  dampened  ardor, 
fearing  that  the  convention  will  do  nothing,  and  the 
South  drift  on.  Soon  after,  we  learn  that  he  is 
going  to  see  Hammond  again  in  order  to  talk  pol 
itics.  During  his  visit  he  hears  that  Virginia  is 
going  to  submit,  through  the  influence  of  politicians 
like  Rives  and  Ritchie,  and  concludes  that  there  is 
no  hope  for  the  South  unless  things  are  taken  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  professional  politicians  and 
given  to  the  people.  He  and  Tucker  and  men  of 
their  stamp  must  take  the  stump  and  yet  refuse 
office.  Late  in  May  he  addresses  Tucker,  at  Nash 
ville,  expressing  his  doubts  whether  Tennessee, 
North  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Kentucky  will  come 
up  to  the  scratch. 

When  Tucker  returned  from  Nashville  he  passed 
through  Charleston,  where  Simms,  who  had  gone 
to  celebrate  the  Fourth  at  Orangeburg,  to  the  re 
gret  of  both  missed  him..  Then  a  brisk  correspon 
dence  ensued  between  them  relative  to  Tucker's 
proposed  life  of  John  Randolph.  Simms  got  esti 
mates  from  his  Charleston  publishers  as  to  the  cost 
of  getting  out  the  work,  and  urged  Tucker  to  write 
it.  For  a  time  politics  are  mentioned  only  in  brief 
sentences,  but  after  the  Georgia  elections  of  1850, 


180  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

in  which  the  hopes  of  the  violent  secessionists  were 
dismally  crushed,  he  broke  forth  as  follows:  — 
"Were  I  to  trust  my  feelings,  I  should  say  to 
South  Carolina,  Secede  at  once.  Let  our  State 
move  per  se.  But  here  's  the  danger :  none  of  the 
Southern  States  stood  to  the  rack  in  1833,  when 
South  Carolina  threw  herself  into  the  breach,  and 
owing  to  the  same  cause,  —  the  faithlessness  and 
selfishness  of  trading  politicians.  Were  South  Car 
olina  to  secede,  her  ports  would  be  blocked  up,  her 
trade  would  pass  to  Georgia,  and  the  appeal  to 
Georgia  cupidity,  filled  as  that  State  is  with  Yan 
kee  traders,  would  be  fatal  to  her  patriotism.  It 
would  be  irresistible  in  keeping  her  in  her  posi 
tion.  The  next  consequence  would  be  that  South 
Carolina  would  lose  a  large  portion  of  her  planting 
population.  It  would  give  a  new  impulse  to  emi 
gration.  They  would  abandon  their  lands  and 
pass  to  Georgia  and  the  West.  Those  who  re 
mained,  goaded  by  privation,  distress,  loss  of  trade, 
profit,  and  perhaps  property,  would  rise  up  and 
rend  their  leaders  to  pieces.  We  must  at  all  haz 
ards  goad  Georgia  to  extremities  and  give  her  no 
encouragement  in  her  submission.  With  South 
Carolina  and  Georgia  moving  for  secession  the 
effect  would  be  conclusive  upon  all  the  South. 
British  assistance  could  not  be  expected  unless  they 
were  shut  out  from  all  the  cotton  ports.  Leave 
the  majority  of  these  open,  and  they  will  encounter 
no  contest  with  the  United  States  for  the  trade  of 
one  or  more  of  our  Southern  cities.  Patience,  and 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     181 

shuffle  the  cards !  Our  emissaries  must  be  at  work. 
If  we  are  to  incur  the  imputation  of  rebellion,  we 
must  use  all  the  arts  of  conspiracy.  We  must 
enter  the  field  with  the  United  States,  and  hold  out 
all  the  proper  lures  to  buy  able  politicians.  We 
must  show  them  that  a  confederacy  of  thirteen 
Southern  States  must  have  the  same  foreign  and 
domestic  establishment  now  maintained  by  the 
thirty-one  States,  and  thus  be  able  to  bid  more 
highly  for  their  support.  We  must  select  our  men, 
and  give  them  their  price.  Meanwhile,  events 
must  favor  us.  The  Abolitionists  will  go  on. 
Quos  Deus  vuli  perdere,  prius  dementat.  The 
South  has  but  a  single  interest,  and  when  it  is  no 
longer  possible  for  her  people  to  doubt  in  respect 
to  its  danger,  there  will  be  no  longer  difficulty  in 
inciting  them  to  its  defense.  They  may  well  con 
tinue  to  doubt,  while  Virginia,  the  mother  of 
States,  and  as  deeply  interested  as  any,  shows  her 
self  so  perfectly  quiescent.  Our  legislature  is  in 
session,  —  a  very  feeble  body,  but  full  of  spirit. 
They  will  probably  call  a  convention  of  the  peo 
ple." 

To  this  letter,  which  was  written  from  Wood 
lands  on  the  27th  of  November,  1850,  Tucker  re 
plied  from  Williamsburg,  on  the  5th  of  December. 
He  complained  of  not  getting  enough  letters  from 
Simms,  and  showed  something  of  the  state  of  his 
mind  by  hazarding  the  extravagant  conjecture  that 
the  government  was  intercepting  letters,  as  it  cer 
tainly  had  done  in  1833.  Apropos  of  Georgia  he 


182  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

quoted  what  James  Gunn1  had  said  forty-seven 
years  before:  "The  State  of  Georgia  is  a  damned 
rascal.  I  bought  her  and  sold  her,  and  will  buy 
her  and  sell  her  again  when  I  please."  And  he 
added,  "For  terms:  apply  to  Messrs.  Toombs  and 
Stevens  [sic]  auctioneers.  N.  B.  Texas  scrip  taken 
in  payment." 

The  first  letters  of  1851  are  taken  up  with  allu 
sions  to  the  article  Tucker  was  preparing  for  the 
"Quarterly,"  on  Garland's  "Life  of  John  Ran 
dolph,"  an  article  which  eventually  appeared  and 
which  was  horribly  scathing.  On  March  2,  Simms 
wrote  from  Woodlands,  reporting  illness  in  his 
family  and  the  advent  of  a  visitor  in  the  person  of 
John  R.  Thompson,  editor  of  the  "Southern  Lit 
erary  Messenger."  Thompson  was  not  inclined 
to  Simms' s  views  of  politics,  and  the  latter  urged 
him  to  make  the  "Messenger"  a  "proper  vehicle 
for  the  true  political  opinion  of  Virginia;"  but 
Thompson  could  not  "rise  to  the  necessity  of  the 
case."2 

On  March  12,  Simms  wrote  that  South  Carolina 
had  called  her  convention,  and  must  now  do  or  die ; 
but  he  added  that,  Calhoun  being  dead,  she  had  no 
pilot  to  enable  her  to  weather  the  storm.  Cheves 
ranked  next  to  Calhoun,  but  he  was  too  much  re 
moved  from  the  public  view,  and  was  "said  to 
shrink  from  the  issue  which  Rhett  and  the  violents  " 

1  Probably  the  first  Senator  from  Georgia,  who  died,  however, 
in  1801. 

8  The  Messenger  soon  became  pronounced  enough  in  its  politic* 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     183 

had  precipitated.  Hammond  was  unpopular,  and 
hostile  to  the  bank,  then  a  considerable  factor  in 
local  politics.  Khett  and  his  followers  taught  that 
if  South  Carolina  chose  to  secede,  she  would  be  al 
lowed  to  do  so  quietly.  On  which  iSimms  re 
marked,  "  I  regard  this  assumption  as  quite  absurd ; 
and  the  question  with  us  is,  how  shall  we  force  the 
blockade  —  how  force  a  fight."  It  was  true  that 
if  the  other  Southern  States  would  agree  to  send 
out  no  cotton,  the  fight  would  be  won,  but  then 
there  was  no  spirit  of  combination  in  the  South. 

To  these  epistles  Tucker  sent  prompt  replies,  so 
that  we  have  no  reason  to  suspect  that  the  govern 
ment  was  watching  him  very  closely.  On  February 
14,  he  indulged  in  reminiscences  of  Calhoun,  and 
recalle<J  how  John  Randolph  had  sent  him  (Tucker) 
in  1833  to  talk  with  the  arch-nullifier,  warn  him 
of  Clay  and  his  compromises,  and  bid  him  not  let 
South  Carolina  back  down.  He  (Tucker)  saw  that 
the  Union  was  a  curse  in  1820.  "I  vowed  then, 
and  I  have  repeated  the  vow,  de  die  in  diem,  that 
I  will  never  give  rest  to  my  eyes  nor  slumber  to 
my  eyelids  until  it  is  shattered  into  fragments.  I 
strove  for  it  in  '33;  I  strove  for  it  in  '50,  and  I 
will  strive  for  it  while  I  live,  and  leave  the  accom 
plishment  to  my  boys.  Time  was  when  I  might 
have  been  less  desperate,  because  I  could  have 
sought  refuge  under  some  emperor  or  king.  But 
all  such  refuges  are  broken  up,  and  there  is  now  no 
escape  from  the  many-headed  despotism  of  num 
bers,  but  by  a  strong  and  bold  stand  on  the  banks 


184  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

of  the  Potomac.  ...  If  we  will  not  have  slaves,  we 
must  be  slaves."  On  the  30th  of  March  he  con 
tinued  this  strain.  He  had  no  country  now,  but 
if  South  Carolina  would  but  stand  her  ground  he 
would  have  a  country.  "If  not,  so  help  me  God, 
as,  if  I  were  twenty  years  younger,  I  would  go  to 
Russia  and  claim  the  protection  of  the  Emperor 
Nicholas  as  the  very  last  man  in  his  dominions 
who  would  ever  think  of  changing  the  dominion 
of  a  single  despot,  Porphyrogenitus,  for  the  multi 
tudinous  tyrannies  of  a  mob." 

But  a  few  days  previous  to  this  last  remarkable 
twinge  of  nightmare,  he  had  written  a  letter  which 
deserves  insertion  almost  entire.  However  wild 
it  may  seem  in  many  respects,  it  shows  that 
Tucker  had  a  clear  enough  head  to  perceive  that 
out  of  the  anarchic  confederacy  which  he  and 
Simms  were  proposing,  and  which  was  attempted 
in  1861,  a  dictator,  and  finally  a  perpetual  despot, 
would  have  been  sure  to  arise. 

WILLIAMSBURG,  March  17,  1851. 

MY  DEAR  SIMMS,  —  ...  I  have  just  mailed 
two  long  letters  to  Hammond  and  Governor  Means,1 
and  all  because  I  cannot  get  your  affairs  out  of  my 
head.  The  providence  of  God  has  placed  the  des 
tiny  of  the  South,  and  of  large  portions  of  two 
sections  of  the  human  race,  in  your  hands.  He  has 
put  it  into  your  hearts  to  assume  this  high  responsi- 

1  John  Hugh  Means  (1812-1862),  then  Governor  of  South  Caro 
lina  and  an  ardent  secessionist. 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     185 

bility.  Do  you  distrust  Him,  or  do  you  distrust 
the  righteousness  of  your  cause?  If  the  latter, 
pause  and  reconsider.  But  if  not,  take  Davy 
Crockett's  maxim:  "Be  sure  you  are  right,  and 
go  ahead."  The  time  to  redress  a  wrong  is  in  the 
moment  it  is  felt  to  be  a  wrong.  We  have  felt 
this  for  thirty  years.  Have  we  gained  or  lost 
strength  by  delay?  Has  our  enemy?  Are  we 
more  or  less  united?  Are  the  principles  of  the 
Constitution  more  or  less  understood?  Had  the 
move  been  made,  as  it  should  have  been,  in  1820, 
would  any  one  have  doubted  the  right  of  a  State 
to  secede  ?  When  before  this  would  any  man  have 
ventured  to  question  it  in  a  Virginia  convention? 
Are  our  public  men  becoming  more  or  less  cor 
rupt  ?  Are  the  flesh-pots  of  Washington  becoming 
more  or  less  seductive?  Is  the  number  of  those 
who  propose  to  themselves  politics  as  a  trade  in 
creasing  or  diminishing?  Is  power  in  our  state 
constitutions  passing  to  or  from  the  hands  of  that 
class  who  "feel  a  stain  to  honor  like  a  wound;" 
who  can  detect  a  future  mischief  in  a  specious  doc 
trine;  who  have  the  sagacity  and  the  boldness  to 
anticipate  a  coming  blow,  instead  of  letting  the 
enemy  choose  his  time  for  attack?  Is  your  wily 
adversary  eager  to  precipitate  this  trial,  or  is  he 
trying  to  keep  all  things  quiet,  until  the  old  organ 
ization  of  parties,  to  which  we  have  been  the  victims, 
can  be  fully  restored?  Now!  Now!!  Now!!!  is 
the  accepted  time.  Now  is  your  day  of  salvation. 
You  may  have  discovered  that  this  is  my  opinion 


186  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

from  something  in  my  last.  But  to  make  this 
course  of  action  wise,  it  should  be  determined  on 
promptly  and  executed  deliberately.  This  is  in 
general  not  the  true  rule,  but  the  reverse  of  it. 
But  it  is  true  here,  because  there  is  no  doubt  what 
should  be  done.  Moreover,  the  case  demands 
preparation  before  the  final  step;  of  which  the 
most  important  is  an  understanding  with  others. 
Not  Virginia.  She  is  sunk  in  the  slough  of  de 
mocracy,  which  has  no  sense  of  honor,  no  fore 
sight,  and  is  never  valiant  but  against  its  own  in 
struments.  Not  Georgia.  She  has  been  bought, 
and  her  price  is  in  the  pockets  of  those  she  trusted. 
Wait  for  neither,  for  neither  will  act  until  they 
hear  their  brother's  blood  crying  from  the  ground. 
The  scent  of  blood  has  a  mighty  power,  and  it  is 
the  only  thing  that  can  rouse  the  mass  of  any  peo 
ple  who  have  shaken  themselves  loose  from  the  in 
fluence  of  high  and  enlightened  minds.  No  rabble 
ever  shook  off  foreign  yoke  unless  provoked  by 
violence  and  bloodshed.  The  peasants  of  Dale- 
carlia  would  have  worked  in  the  mines  to  this  day, 
had  not  Gustavus  come  among  them.  When  mobs 
aim  at  no  more  than  rapine  they  may  make  it  ne 
cessary  to  use  violence  to  put  them  down,  and  as 
soon  as  blood  flows  they  become  fierce  and  desper 
ate,  and  the  emeute  becomes  a  revolution.  The 
wise  rulers  of  England  were  aware  of  this  on  the 
10th  of  April,  1848,1  and  the  demonstration  ended 
as  all  demonstrations  of  mobs  do,  when  it  is  left  to 

1  He  refers  to  the  Chartist  meeting  on  Kennington  Common. 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     187 

them  to  strike  the  first  blow.  And  what  are  our 
democracies  but  mobs?  South  Carolina  alone  can 
act,  because  she  is  the  only  State  in  which  the 
gentleman  retains  his  place  and  influence,  and  in 
which  the  statesman  has  not  been  degraded  from 
his  post.  You  are  fast  coming  to  that  hopeless  and 
irreclaimable  condition ;  and  then  all  hope  of  action 
is  gone.  Work  now.  "  Work  while  it  is  yet  called 
to-day,  for  the  night  cometh  when  no  man  can 
work."  The  twilight  is  already  upon  you,  and 
hence  I  fear  you  will  not  act  even  now.  And  if 
not  now  —  never,  never,  never ! 

I  like  your  notion  of  a  permanent  convention. 
It  chimes  in  with  mine  of  deliberate  action.  It 
will  admit  of  the  exercise,  in  emergency,  of  such 
powers  as  ought  not  to  be  committed  to  any  organ 
ized  government.  It  admits  of  the  appointment 
of  a  dictator,  if  necessary.  Unlimited  power  is 
often  necessary  to  call  forth  and  concentrate  all 
the  resources  of  a  people,  and  the  only  way  to 
make  it  safe  is  to  limit  its  existence  to  the  dura 
tion  of  the  emergency.  To  do  this  effectually 
it  must  be  extra-constitutional.  In  the  struggle 
which  may  be  before  you,  no  government  meant  to 
be  permanent  can  be  efficient  under  the  constitu 
tional  restraints  which  are  indispensable.  What 
you  want  is  a  convention  commissioned  to  see 
"quod  nullum  detrimentum  capiat  respublica." 
The  first  use  this  many-headed  dictator  should 
make  of  this  power,  in  case  of  war,  should  be  to 
delegate  it  to  a  dictator  with  one  head.  If  I  could 


188  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

be  sure  you  would  do  this,  I  should  be  almost 
wicked  enough  to  wish  you  a  little  brush.  Such 
things  call  out  the  men  worthy  to  rule,  and  show 
the  people  their  value,  so  that  the  evil  day  of  de 
mocracy  may  be  indefinitely  postponed. 

Meantime,  are  you  taking  no  measures  to  under 
stand  what  may  be  expected  from  foreign  powers, 
especially  England?  If  any  thing  of  the  sort  be 
done,  I  know  it  must  be  done  secretly,  and  there 
fore  I  hope  it  is  done.1  Let  England  be  made  to 
understand  the  quarrel,  and  her  interest  in  it,  and 
your  enemy  will  be  checkmated  at  the  first  move. 
Let  her  keep  the  port  of  Charleston  open,  and 
Georgia  will  presently  join  you;  you  form  the 
nucleus  of  a  Southern  confederacy,  and  we  all  fall 
in,  one  by  one.  Then  if  we  can  but  steer  clear  of 
the  treacherous  syrtis  of  democracy,  we  may  flour 
ish  and  be  free  and  happy  for  the  full  time  of  the 
natural  life  of  a  republic.  That  I  take  to  be 
about  three  generations.  What  befalls  our  great 
grandchildren  we  rarely  care.  A  life  or  lives  in 
being,  and  twenty-one  years  after,  is  as  long  as 
the  wise  old  common  law  allows  any  man  to  control 
his  own  property.  What  folly,  then,  for  any  gen 
eration  of  men  to  think  itself  called  to  establish 
political  institutions  in  perpetuity.  Our  Constitu 
tion,  just  sixty  years  old,  is  an  example.  What 
has  become  of  it  ?  Except  as  an  engine  of  power 
it  has  no  existence.  .  .  . 

1  The  letters  to  Hammond  and  Governor  Means  suggested  the 
sending  of  an  accredited  agent  by  the  governor. 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     189 

We  have  now  seen  how  these  old  Southerners 
talked  politics  over  their  toddies  and  plotted  to 
destroy  the  Union  of  their  fathers,  with  the  thor 
ough  conviction  that  they  were  doing  their  duty  in 
that  state  of  life  to  which  it  had  pleased  God  to 
call  them.  That  they  were  doing  what  some  might 
think  wrong  they  knew  very  well;  but  when  they 
questioned  their  own  consciences,  their  consciences, 
and  they  had  them,  approved  their  actions.  It 
may  be  hard  for  a  modern  reader,  especially  one 
not  Southern  born,  to  believe  this;  but  no  histor 
ical  truth  is  more  capable  of  verification.  And 
in  face  of  this  truth  we  must  refrain  from  blam 
ing  them  even  when  we  think  of  the  desolation 
and  ruin  that  followed  upon  the  adoption  of  their 
counsels.  "Blind  leaders  of  the  blind  "  we  may 
well  call  them;  but  we  must  remember  that  at 
least  they  marched  bravely  and  cheerily  into  the 
mire,  and  that  their  march  and  their  plight  are 
not  subjects  for  laughter  or  for  frowns,  but  for 
tears. 

Many  other  letters  of  this  period  treating  of  pol 
itics  have  fallen  under  my  eyes,  some  of  them  very 
interesting,  especially  those  which  Simms  received 
from  his  friend  Major  Hammond,  the  brother  of 
the  ex-governor.  In  all  of  them  secession  is  more 
or  less  preached,  and  one  is  enabled  to  see  how 
thoroughly  the  people  were  being  educated  to  the 
idea  of  a  new  confederacy.  One  also  sees  how 
well  informed  the  private  gentlemen  in  the  South 
always  were  on  political  subjects.  Men  who  knew 


190  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

nothing  of  the  steps  Richelieu  had  taken  to  central 
ize  France  could  tell  you  every  step  that  had  been 
taken  in  that  direction  in  America  since  the  forma 
tion  of  the  Union.  Nor  was  this  at  all  remarkable. 
In  the  North  a  man  had  his  business  to  attend  to, 
and  he  naturally  fell  into  the  habit  of  letting  his 
politicians  manage  his  politics  for  him,  just  as  his 
clergyman  attended  to  his  religion.  In  the  South 
few  men  had  any  absorbing  business  to  look  after, 
and  hunting  and  fishing  and  smoTdng  and  drinking 
and  dancing  could  not  occupy  all  their  time  and 
thoughts.  They  had  to  read  sometimes,  and  tradi 
tion  and  the  fact  that  as  aristocrats  they  were  born 
leaders  of  men,  naturally  turned  their  reading  to 
political  lines.  They  never  failed  to  read  the 
political  leaders  in  their  favorite  newspaper,  or  to 
hear  a  political  speech  if  one  were  delivered  within 
twenty  miles  of  them.  They  read  law,  especially 
Blackstone,  without  the  slightest  intention  of  prac 
ticing  it,  merely  in  order  to  train  their  minds  for 
politics.  They  read  constitutional  history  for  the 
same  reason,  but  to  very  little  purpose,  if  one  may 
judge  from  Calhoun's  praise  of  the  constitution  of 
Poland.  Hence,  one  is  not  surprised  to  find  that 
the  best  articles  in  the  "Southern  Quarterly"  are 
those  that  treat  of  politics,  or  that  Simms,  literary 
man  though  he  was,  was  often  more  at  home  in 
criticising  works  like  Guizot's  "Democracy  in 
France,"  than  he  was  in  criticising  contemporary 
novels  and  poetry.  But  perhaps  we  have  tarried 
long  enough  in  the  world  of  nightmares. 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     191 

During  the  eight  years  treated  of  in  the  last 
chapter,  it  was  not  infrequently  announced  that 
Simms  had  in  hand  a  new  historical  romance.  He 
probably  began  several,  as  was  his  wont,  and  then 
cast  them  aside.  This  may  have  been  the  case 
with  "Katharine  Walton,"  the  concluding  volume 
of  his  Revolutionary  trilogy,  which  began  to  appear 
in  "Godey's  Lady's  Book"  in  January,  1850. 
Like  too  many  of  his  works  it  was  written  piece 
meal,  in  answer  to  the  printer's  cry  for  copy. 

In  one  respect  at  least  the  romance  had  not  lost 
by  its  thirteen  years  of  waiting.  During  that  pe 
riod  even  Simms 's  friends,  who  had  formerly  advised 
him  to  avoid  writing  on  home  subjects,  had  been 
forced  to  confess  that  South  Carolina  was  a  "very 
storehouse  for  romance."  He  therefore  had  some 
hope  that  his  story  would  find  more  readers  at 
home  than  his  former  romances  had  done,  and  he 
knew  besides  that  his  knowledge  of  the  period  he 
intended  to  treat  had  greatly  increased.  A  study 
of  his  letters  of  this  date  shows  how  conscientiously 
Simms  always  labored  in  gathering  materials  for 
his  work.  He  filled  commonplace  books  with  in 
formation  culled  from  all  quarters.  He  was  con 
stantly  in  correspondence  with  local  antiquarians 
like  General  Jamison,  asking  such  minute  questions 
as  where  the  Orangeburg  tavern  was  standing  in 
1780,  and  what  was  the  tavern  keeper's  name. 
Nothing  was  too  trivial  to  require  investigation. 
Now  this  thoroughness  is  an  admirable  character 
istic,  and  a  somewhat  remarkable  one  in  a  South- 


192  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

ern  author,  but  its  results  are  not  always  satis 
factory.  "Katharine  Walton"  is  a  much  more 
conscientious  piece  of  work  than  "The  Partisan," 
but  it  is  not  so  interesting  a  romance.  It  reads, 
in  fact,  too  much  like  a  carefully  prepared  social 
history. 

Simms  indeed  tells  us,  in  a  preface,  that  he  has 
been  thoroughly  accurate  in  his  descriptions  of 
life  in  Charleston  during  the  British  occupation, 
for  "Katharine  Walton  "  presents  us  with  the  chief 
characters  of  "The  Partisan,"  cooped  up  for  the 
most  part  within  the  walls  of  the  stately  old  city. 
He  even  vouches  for  the  historical  character  of  the 
bits  of  repartee  assigned  to  his  various  personages. 
But  this  is  a  claim  to  be  advanced  by  an  historian, 
not  by  a  romancer;  and  if  Poe  had  lived  to  read 
"Katharine  Walton,"  he  would  probably  have 
said  of  it,  as  he  did  of  "Beauchampe,"  that  its  au 
thor  did  not  rely  sufficiently  on  his  own  imagina 
tion.  It  may  be  remarked  that  in  one  exciting 
scene,  —  in  which  a  young  British  officer,  "  Mad 
Archy  Campbell,"  drives  off  with  an  American 
beauty  and  terrifies  her  into  marrying  him,  — 
Simms  seems  to  have  drawn  on  the  imagination 
of  some  one  else  when  he  thought  he  was  retailing 
veritable  history.  One  of  the  descendants  of  the 
pair  has  recently  published  a  denial  of  the  whole 
romantic  episode. 

The  chief  element,  then,  that  is  lacking  to  the 
book  is  that  indefinable  something  called  charm 
which  is  found  in  "The  Partisan."  Simms,  in 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     193 

spite  of  his  historical  knowledge,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  he  was  a  Charlestonian  born,  did  not 
move  as  freely  in  the  city  as  in  the  swamp,  or 
among  haughty  gentlemen  and  ladies  as  among 
plain-speaking  troopers  and  scouts.  Hence,  al 
though  his  romance  keeps  us  moving  through  excit 
ing  and  interesting  scenes;  although  we  take  an 
interest  in  the  fortunes  of  its  heroine ;  although  we 
feel  that  we  have  made  acquaintances  among  some  of 
its  characters,  —  we  nevertheless  lay  it  down  with 
the  conviction  that  it  would  have  been  a  greater 
success  had  it  come  from  a  writer  more  in  sympa 
thy  with  the  company  he  was  keeping,  and  pos 
sessed  of  an  innate  understanding  of  their  modes  of 
life  and  thought.  Charleston  under  British  rule, 
with  its  patriotic  citizens  scarce  daring  to  speak 
above  a  whisper,  and  its  sycophantic  adherents  to 
the  royal  cause  basking  in  short-lived  sunshine, 
was  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  suitable  a  theme  for 
the  romancer  as  courtly  Williamsburg  at  the  time 
of  the  advent  of  "The  Virginia  Comedians."  Yet 
John  Esten  Cooke,  although  only  twenty-four,  and 
with  no  such  store  of  historical  information,  or 
indeed  with  such  native  powers  to  draw  on,  as 
Simms,  succeeded,  in  his  romance  bearing  the 
above  title,  in  transferring  far  more  of  the  charm 
of  that  old-time  life  to  his  pages  than  our  veteran 
romancer  did  in  this  work  of  his  prime. 

Cooke,  it  is  true,  did  not  fulfill  the  promise  of  his 
youth ;  but  this  was  less  his  own  fault  than  the  un 
fortunate  result  of  the  years  of  strife  through  which 


194  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

he  was  destined  to  pass.  He  is  one  of  the  saddest 
examples  in  all  Southern  history  of  a  man  of 
marked  ability  wrecked  in  the  turmoil  of  the 
times  in  which  his  lot  was  cast.  When  he  came 
out  of  the  war,  the  school  of  fiction  in  which  he 
had  been  trained  (he  always  called  Simms  his  mas 
ter)  had  seen  its  best  days.  He  could  not  change 
the  style  of  his  work  to  suit  the  changed  tastes  of 
his  public,  and  in  his  extremity  he  turned  to  his  va 
ried  war  experiences  to  eke  out  his  literary  capital. 
His  "Surrey"  and  his  "Mohun"  were,  however, 
huge  failures,  which  should  stand  as  grave  warnings 
to  all  writers  who  shall  hereafter  turn  to  a  period 
that  must  sooner  or  later  furnish  abundant  ma 
terials  to  future  writers  of  fiction.  If  he  had  only 
contented  himself  with  writing  with  soldierly  sim 
plicity  his  own  memoirs,  he  would  have  secured  for 
himself  an  immortality.1  As  it  is,  he  is  easily  the 
second  Southern  romancer  after  Simms,  and  per 
haps,  had  he  been  born  twenty  years  earlier,  he 
might  have  made  the  South  Carolinian  look  to  his 
laurels.  Those  laurels,  indeed,  Cooke  never  dis 
puted,  and  to  the  day  of  his  death  Simms  had  no 
warmer  friend  than  the  pure-hearted  Virginian. 

But  Simms  did  not  always  fail  in  his  descrip 
tions  of  the  social  life  of  the  Carolina  aristocracy. 
He  failed  when  sympathy  and  an  innate  under 
standing  were  required,  but  not  when  he  undertook 
to  satirize  the  peculiarities  and  unlovable  qualities 
of  that  life.  The  reason  for  this  is  obvious.  The 

1   Wearing  of  the  Gray  is  hardly  such  a  book. 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     195 

indifference  always  manifested  for  his  work  and  for 
himself  by  the  upper  classes  naturally  provoked 
him  and  sharpened  his  eyes  to  the  obvious  faults 
of  his  critics.  Hence  in  his  novelette,  "  The  Golden 
Christmas;  a  Chronicle  of  St.  John's  Berkeley" 
(1852),  he  gives  a  very  amusing  description  of  some 
of  the  oddities  produced  by  six  generations  of  in 
termarriages  between  first  cousins.  His  Madame 
Agnes-Theresa  Girardin,  gaunt,  colorless  embodi 
ment  of  family  pride,  walking  down  King  Street 
like  a  social  barometer,  rising  and  falling,  stiffen 
ing  and  unbending,  according  to  the  blueuess  of 
the  blood  of  the  persons  she  meets,  is  a  really 
successful  creation,  even  if  she  is  described  in 
broader  strokes  than  our  modern  story  tellers  use. 
This  Madame  Girardin,  who  cannot  see  a  woman 
with  a  fresh  complexion  witTiout  suspecting  that  her 
blood  is  no  better  than  it  should  be,  and  Major 
Buhner,  descendant  of  one  of  Locke's  palatines, 
who  still  drives  his  old  family  coach,  swears  by  the 
English  and  hates  the  French,  even  the  Huguenot 
Carolinians,  make  what  would  be  otherwise  merely 
a  thin  love  story  rather  entertaining  reading.  It 
is  true  that,  as  has  been  remarked  above,  Simms 
is  by  no  means  as  careful  in  his  sketches  as  a  mod 
ern  writer  would  be.  He  does  not  indulge  in 
any  nice  character  shading,  he  gives  us  nothing 
approaching  a  photograph;  and  he  never  by  any 
possibility  charms  us  by  his  style.  But  the  condi 
tions  under  which  he  wrote  were  very  different 
from  those  which  surround  the  modern  writer.  He 


196  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

was  primarily  a  romancer,  and  he  did  his  genre 
work  as  a  pioneer.  His  public  were  not  educated 
to  the  merits  of  the  short  story  as  a  work  of  art, 
and  he  did  something  to  make  them  see,  had  they 
cared  to  open  their  eyes,  that  there  was  a  great  fu 
ture  in  store  for  that  form  of  fiction.  Were  he  alive 
and  writing  now,  his  immense  energy,  his  keen 
appreciation  of  local  differences  of  tone  and  color, 
his  ability  to  keep  his  characters,  whether  puppets 
or  not,  always  in  motion,  would  make  him  a  for 
midable  rival  to  the  many  younger  writers  of 
promise  who  have  to  a  large  extent  crowded  him 
off  the  stage. 

The  year  1850  saw,  besides  "Katharine  Walton  " 
and  a  rather  creditable  poem  delivered  at  the  con 
secration  of  Magnolia  Cemetery  in  Charleston, 
another  book  bearing  Simms's  name  on  the  title- 
page.  This  was  "The  Lily  and  the  Totem,"  a 
volume  modeled  upon  the  once  popular  series  of 
works  known  as  "The  Romance  of  History." 
Coligny's  colonies  in  North  America  formed  the 
subject  of  Simms's  new  publication,  and  one  is  cer 
tain  that  the  prolific  author  did  more  credit  to  him 
self  and  to  his  subject  by  writing  in  prose  than  he 
would  have  done  had  he  stuck  to  his  original  inten 
tion  of  writing  in  verse.  "The  Lily  and  the 
Totem  "  seems  to  be  the  only  one  of  Simms's  books 
that  has  been  republished  at  the  South  since  his 
death. 

It  would  not  be  right  to  pass  to  another  year 
without  alluding  to  the  large  quantity  of  work 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     197 

done  by  Simms  for  his  review  within  this  twelve 
month.  He  wrote  exactly  ten  articles,  few  of 
them  under  forty  pages,  and  four  "critical  no 
tices,"  in  which  upwards  of  one  hundred  and  fifty 
books  were  passed  in  review.  Of  course  many  of 
these  were  skimmed,  but  some,  it  can  be  perceived, 
were  carefully  read.  The  quality  of  the  criticisms 
is  by  no  means  as  bad  as  would  be  expected  from 
the  quantity.  One  is  never  sure  of  entirely  sane 
criticism  from  Simms,  he  was  much  too  full  of 
crotchets;  but  certainly  the  man  who  could  write 
thus  of  Browning  forty -one  years  ago  is  entitled  to 
some  regard  :  — 

"Browning  is  no  common  verse  maker.  He  is 
a  writer  of  thought  and  genius,  of  peculiar  and 
curious  powers  as  an  artist;  subtle,  spiritual,  and 
singularly  fanciful,  and,  though  as  yet  unacknow 
ledged,  is  one  of  the  master  minds  of  living  Eu 
ropean  song.  .  .  .  He  will  grow  slowly  in  public 
esteem,  and  finally,  when  his  peculiar  phraseology 
shall  become  familiar  to  the  ear,  it  will  compel  an 
admiration  which  is  very  far  from  general  now. 
.  .  .  His  claim  to  the  regards  of  those  who  require 
a  deep  and  earnest  thought  in  verse,  as  well  as 
music  and  fancy,  is  beyond  question.  All  such  per 
sons  must  take  him  to  their  studies,  if  not  to  their 
hearts."1 

When  American  authors  were  in  question, 
Simms  was  loyal  to  his  Knickerbocker  friends  over 
the  rising  influence  of  New  England.  In  1845,  he 
1  Southern  Quarterly  Review,  Sept.  1850,  pp.  25G-7. 


198  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

had  a  few  pleasant  words  for  Longfellow  and  Em 
erson,  and  more  for  Lowell,  but  when  he  came,  in 
1850,  to  review  "A  Fable  for  Critics,"  which  he 
was  loath  to  attribute  to  Lowell,  he  seems  to  have 
made  up  his  mind  that  no  abolitionist  was  worthy 
of  any  manner  of  praise.  Emerson  is  now  little 
more  than  an  idiot,  Lowell,  if  he  wrote  the  poem 
under  review,  is  a  base-hearted  slanderer,  whose 
publishers  are  warned  to  cease  disseminating  his 
abominable  opinions  on  the  subject  of  slavery. 
Alcott  is  a  silly  pilferer  from  Plato,  fit  only  for 
ridicule,  which  he  gets,  by  the  way,  from  Simms 
in  no  measured  quantity.  Still,  as  the  abolitionists, 
taken  by  and  large,  did  in  spite  of  their  sincerity 
lack  sweetness  and  light  to  a  certain  extent,  at  least 
from  a  Southern  standpoint,  our  critic's  aberrations 
may  be  pardoned  even  when  he  is  unjust  to  so 
large-hearted  a  man  as  Emerson.  It  is  a  little 
curious,  however,  to  find  him  writing,  in  1849, 
that  there  is  no  imaginative  faculty  in  New  Eng 
land,  and  proving  it  by  the  fact  that  most  of  the 
earlier  American  romancers  owed  their  genius  to  a 
friendlier  climate  where,  indeed,  they  were  not 
puffed  as  New  England's  literary  sons  were  wont 
to  be.  One  recollects  that  Hawthorne  had  written 
some  tales  worthy  of  being  called  imaginative,  and 
that '"The  Scarlet  Letter"  was  already  in  his 
mind;  and  that  Judd  had  written  "Margaret" 
some  four  years  before.  But  Massachusetts  and 
Carolina  were  not  on  easy  terms  in  1849,  and  the 
"North  American"  had  once  upon  a  time  been 
needlessly  severe  on  Simms. 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     199 

The  year  1851  calls  for  little  special  notice. 
Simms  produced  as  usual  a  large  quantity  of  man 
uscript,  but  the  only  thing  of  any  consequence  that 
was  published  was  his  "Norman  Maurice;  an 
American  Drama,"  which  appeared  in  the  "South 
ern  Literary  Messenger,"  and  was  shortly  after 
issued  in  pamphlet  form.  This  was  a  bold,  if 
unsuccessful  undertaking.  Simms  grappled  with 
a  problem  which  has  yet  to  be  solved,  and  thought 
he  had  solved  it  by  combining  a  strictly  Amer 
ican  plot  with  a  method  of  presentation  taken  at 
second  hand  from  his  favorite  Elizabethans.  He 
has  no  difficulty  in  making  a  Philadelphia  lawyer 
and  a  Missouri  politician  talk  in  blank  verse  which 
is  sometimes  so  bald  that  it  seems  a  very  appropri 
ate  medium  of  expression  for  the  absurd  political 
theories  advanced  by  the  latter.  As  a  matter  of 
course  the  reader  is  at  one  moment  breathless  at  the 
author's  audacity,  and  at  the  next  moment  laugh 
ing  at  his  crudities  of  thought  and  expression. 
How  could  it  be  otherwise,  and  who  shall  say  that 
Simms  did  not  have  the  courage  of  his  convictions 
when  he  could  write  such  lines  as  these?  « 

"  Another  action, 

The  insurance  case  of  Fergnsson  and  Brooks, 
Secures  him  handsome  profits." 

There  is  certainly  no  lack  of  melodramatic  ef 
fect.  The  villain  commits  a  forgery  and  accuses 
the  hero  of  the  crime;  he  likewise  threatens  the 
virtue  of  the  hero's  wife,  and  that  Roman  dame 
stabs  herself  and  her  would-be  ravisher,  and  ends 


200  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

the  play  just  at  the  time  her  husband  is  elected 
United  States  senator  from  Missouri.  There  is 
plenty  of  swagger,  a  duel,  long  speeches  in  high- 
sounding  verse,  enough  in  all  conscience  to  keep 
reader  or  spectator  awake.  Yet  the  world  was  no 
nearer  having  a  good  modern  drama  than  it  had 
been  before  Simms  made  his  heroic  experiment. 

"Norman  Maurice"  was  praised  highly  in  cer 
tain  quarters, — for  example,  by  the  "Interna 
tional  Magazine  "  and  by  G.  P.  R.  James,  —  and 
it  went  through  four  editions.  In  1854  an  aspiring 
actor,  Mr.  George  K.  Dickinson,  put  it  in  rehear 
sal  at  Nashville,  Tennessee,  and  wrote  Simms  an 
exuberant  letter  about  the  triumph  to  be  expected 
for  it  at  St.  Louis.  But  although  Dickinson  filled 
an  engagement  at  St.  Louis  during  the  Christ 
mas  holidays  of  1854,  and  although  the  "Missouri 
Republican "  contained  a  glowing  notice  of  Mr. 
Simms 's  new  American  play,  which  would  shortly 
be  produced  at  the  People's  Theatre,  the  perform 
ance  did  not  come  off,  and  Dickinson's  letters 
suddenly  ceased. 

The  year  1852  was  more  prolific  in  publica 
tions  than  1851  had  been.  Not  satisfied  with  his 
novelette,  "The  Golden  Christmas,"  Simms  gave 
it  a  companion  tale  of  Georgia  life,  entitled  "As 
Good  as  a  Comedy."  This  was  issued  anony 
mously,  and  the  story  was  put  in  the  mouth  of  a 
Tennessean,  with  a  dialect  somewhat  familiar  to 
modern  readers.  The  book  rather  belied  its  name, 
for  the  humor  is  not  as  abundant  as  the  critic  in 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     201 

the  "Lady's  Book,"  who  thought  that  Simms  ex 
celled  Dickens  in  many  respects,  would  have  had 
his  readers  believe ;  but  it  has  the  merit  of  describ 
ing  certain  phases  of  Georgia  life  very  well,  and  the 
account  given  of  an  ante-bellum  Southern  race 
course  has  lost  none  of  its  interest  with  the  lapse  of 
years.  A  third  novelette  was  "Marie  de  Berniere: 
a  Tale  of  the  Crescent  City,"  originally  contrib 
uted  to  T.  S.  Arthur's  "Home  Gazette,"  and  after 
wards  published  in  a  volume  along  with  other  tales. 
The  reader  who  thinks  that  Mr.  Cable  is  here  fore 
stalled  is  decidedly  mistaken.  The  local  color  in 
troduced  is  of  very  thin  quality,  and  the  only  thing 
French  about  the  story  is  a  not  entirely  unsuccess 
ful  attempt  to  make  a  stalwart  Tennessean  play  the 
part  of  a  Vidocq.  Had  Simms  so  chosen  he  could 
have  won  a  fair  reputation  in  a  school  of  fiction  best 
represented,  perhaps,  by  the  name  of  M.  Fortune 
du  Boisgobey. 

We  must  not  linger,  however,  over  these  stories 
which  Simms  dashed  off  with  such  astonishing  ease, 
nor  can  we  pause  to  consider  his  second  and  only 
acted  play,  "  Michael  Bonham,"  for  that  will  occupy 
us  hereafter.  Our  attention  must  be  confined  to 
what  is  certainly  the  most  humorous,  and  in  many 
respects  the  best  sustained,  of  all  our  author's 
works,  "The  Sword  and  the  Distaff,"  which  now 
appears  under  the  revised  but  hardly  improved  title 
of  "Woodcraft."  This  romance  is  the  fourth  in 
the  connected  series  of  Revolutionary  romances,  but 
from  the  time  of  its  action  it  should  properly  have 
been  the  sixth  and  last. 


202  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

Its  hero  is  Lieutenant  Porgy,  who,  upon  the  ad 
vent  of  peace,  has  left  the  swamp  camps  of  Mar 
ion,  and  is  returning  full  of  honors  and  debts  to 
his  dismantled  plantation.  Just  before  reaching  it 
he  manages  to  rescue  a  fair  widow  neighbor  of  his 
from  a  band  of  ruffians,  who  are  trying  to  kidnap 
a  train  of  slaves  she  is  bringing  home.  A  boy 
reader  would  take  intense  delight  in  the  exciting 
description  Simms  gives  of  the  swamp  fight  that 
took  place  at  this  juncture.  An  older  reader  would 
feel  that  he  was  getting  an  admirable  description 
of  the  wild  and  lawless  condition  of  Carolina  just 
after  the  Revolution.  As  the  story  progresses  the 
desolation  that  has  fallen  upon  plantation  and  plan 
ter  alike  is  described  in  a  graphic  way;  and  the 
evil  effects  that  a  period  of  strife  is  likely  to  exert 
upon  weak  or  vicious  natures  are  forcibly  exempli 
fied  in  some  of  the  leading  characters.  One  of 
these,  Bostwick  the  squatter,  typifies  most  accu 
rately  the  Southern  poor  white  at  his  very  worst. 
Both  for  its  interest  and  for  its  faithfulness  to  the 
truth  of  history,  the  romance  deserves  to  be  read. 

The  humor  which,  for  a  wonder,  Simms  suc 
ceeded  in  putting  into  "The  Sword  and  the  Dis 
taff  "  is  not  of  a  high  order,  but  it  is  humor  never 
theless.  It  emerges  from  the  situations  in  which 
the  characters  find  themselves,  rather  than  from 
anything  they  say.  Porgy  is  urged  by  his  one- 
armed  Sancho  Panza,  Sergeant  Millhouse,  who  is 
also  a  reminiscence  of  Corporal  Trim,  and  of  other 
worthy  followers  of  romantic  heroes,  to  better  his 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     203 

fortunes  by  marrying  the  rich  widow  he  has  res 
cued.  He  half  consents,  and  is  led  into  all  sorts  of 
blunders  which  make  him  vow  to  live  and  die  a 
bachelor.  Although  it  is  obvious  that  Simms  is 
only  following  Smollett  afar  off,  and  although  his 
most  amusing  scene  is  taken  bodily  from  an  Eliza 
bethan  play,  he  certainly  succeeded  in  writing  an 
entertaining  book;  and  one  is  disposed  to  regret 
that  its  proposed  sequel,  "The  Humors  of  Glen 
Eberley,"  was  not  written  and  handed  over  to  the 
Georgia  publisher  who  applied  for  it. 

Passing  now  for  a  moment  from  romance  to  pol 
itics,  I  may  remark  that  during  this  period  Simms 
did  not  cease  to  indulge  his  dreams  of  public  office. 
It  is  true  that  he  refused  to  allow  his  friends  to 
push  him  forward  as  a  candidate  for  Congress  from 
the  Charleston  district;  but  it  was  otherwise  with 
diplomatic  sinecures,  and  he  did  not  discourage  the 
applications  made  to  President  Taylor  by  Major 
Hammond  through  the  former's  private  secretary, 
Bliss.  A  mission  to  one  of  the  minor  courts  would 
have  pleased  our  author  greatly,  but  the  overtures 
of  his  friends  seem  to  have  been  received  in  silence. 
Then  Hammond,  who  was  a  capital  fellow  if  one 
may  judge  from  his  letters,  began  to  urge  the 
claims  of  "Father  Abbot,"  as  he  delighted  to  call 
Simms,  to  the  presidency  of  the  South  Carolina 
College,  which  had  just  been  resigned  by  ex-Sen 
ator  William  C.  Preston.  But  although  Simms 
would  not  have  disliked  this  position, —  no  sinecure, 


204  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

by  the  way,  —  he  knew  too  well  the  prejudices  ex 
isting  against  him  to  hope  for  such  an  appoint 
ment.  He  accordingly  contented  himself  with 
helping  to  spread  tfye  doctrine  of  the  divine  origin 
of  slavery  by  contributing  to  a  volume  that  rejoiced 
in  the  contradictory  title  of  "The  Pro-Slavery  Ar 
gument."  His  fellow-contributors  were  Chancel 
lor  Harper,  one  of  the  most  prolific  and  forcible  of 
all  these  apologists,  ex-Governor  Hammond,  and 
Professor  Dew. 

Soon  after,  he  gave  this  volume  a  companion  by 
reissuing,  under  the  title  "South  Carolina  in  the 
.Revolutionary  War,"  two  articles  that  had  at 
tracted  some  attention  on  their  first  publication  in 
the  "Southern  Quarterly  Review  "  for  1848.  The 
name  of  the  volume  would  suggest  that  Simms  had 
again  taken  up  the  role  of  historian ;  but  such  was 
not  primarily  the  case.  The  essays,  indeed,  pos 
sessed  some  little  interest  to  historical  students,  but 
they  were  first  and  foremost  the  work  of  a  heated 
controversialist.  Lorenzo  Sabine  had  just  (1847) 
published  his  "American  Loyalists,"  and  had  there 
in  taken  occasion  to  make  some  reflections  upon 
the  support  South  Carolina  had  given  to  the  cause 
of  the  Revolution.  His  remarks  had  been  by  no 
means  violent,  and  not  entirely  ill  founded.  But 
that  South  Carolina  should  be  criticised  at  all, 
much  less  by  a  New  Englander,  was  more  than 
Simms  could  stand.  He  rushed  at  Sabine,  and  all 
loyal  Southerners  proclaimed  that  the  Yankee  had 
been  demolished.  As  far  as  I  can  gather,  Simma 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     205 

did  succeed  in  convicting  Sabine  of  one  gross  er 
ror,  which  the  latter  at  once  acknowledged  in  his 
correspondence,  and  subsequently  corrected  in  the 
second  edition  of  his  laborious  and  honest  work. 
He  also  opposed  to  Sabine 's  charges  many  facts 
which  went  far  towards  explaining  South  Caroli 
na's  alleged  apathy  in  the  great  struggle  for  free 
dom.  Here  he  was  on  his  own  ground,  and  al 
though  Sabine,  after  mature  consideration,  did  not 
retract  his  charges,  those  charges  should  be  read 
only  in  connection  with  Simms's  vindication  of  his 
native  State.  When,  however,  our  hot-blooded 
Southerner  proceeded  to  carry  the  war  into  Africa 
by  retorting  against  New  England  very  much  the 
same  charges  that  had  been  made  against  South 
Carolina,  he  was  betrayed  into  gross  indiscretions, 
and  injured  his  own  cause.  Sabine  had  been  dig 
nified,  however  malicious  his  criticism  in  the  eyes 
of  a  loyal  Southerner;  but  Simms  was  decidedly 
undignified  in  his  coarse  strictures  on  the  memo 
ries  of  New  England  patriots  like  Stark  and  Put 
nam.  One  can  only  contrast  his  petulance  and 
want  of  courtesy  with  the  quiet  tone  in  which  Sa 
bine  alluded  in  his  second  edition  to  the  attacks 
that  had  been  made  upon  himself .  Still,  as  this 
petulance  and  want  of  courtesy  subsequently  put 
Simms  into  one  of  the  most  trying  positions  of  his 
life,  and  as  many  excuses  are  to  be  made  for  a  man 
who  was  living  in  the  heated  atmosphere  of  South 
Carolina  in  those  days  of  agitation,  it  will  be  a»  well 
to  dismiss,  for  the  present,  the  unpleasant  subject. 


206  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

It  is  certainly  a  great  step  from  these  controver 
sial  tracts  to  the  first  collected  edition  of  our  au 
thor's  poems.  Simms  and  many  of  his  friends  had 
long  been  wishing  for  such  a  consummation ;  now, 
in  1853,  there  appeared  two  thick  volumes  with  the 
following  sufficient  title  :  "Poems  Descriptive, 
Dramatic,  Legendary,  and  Contemplative."  Surely 
the  public  had  now  an  ample  opportunity  to  form 
its  judgment  upon  Simms's  merits  as  a  poet.  But 
that  judgment  had  been  practically  formed  already, 
and  there  was  nothing  in  these  volumes  to  change 
it.  On  the  score  of  quantity  Simms  had  had  no 
thing  to  fear  for  a  long  time ;  on  the  score  of  qual 
ity  he  was  neither  better  nor  worse  off  than  before, 
his  youthful  "Atalantis"  still  remaining  his  most 
considerable  work.  The  mildest  judgment  that 
can  be  passed  is  that  the  volumes  were  needless,  — 
a  judgment  which  is  equally  applicable  to  another 
publication  of  this  year,  "Egeria,"  a  collection  of 
what  Simms  regarded  as  the  best  passages  or 
"gems"  to  be  found  in  his  multifarious  prose 
writings. 

In  the  early  part  of  1854,  Simms  made  a  short 
but  successful  lecturing  tour  to  Washington,  Rich 
mond,  Petersburg,  and  perhaps  other  places;  then 
he  settled  down  to  the  routine  work  of  editing  his 
review,  which  was  beginning  to  drag,  and  relieved 
the  tedium,  we  may  imagine,  by  observing  what  the 
critics  had  to  say  of  a  certain  romance  he  had  just 
published  under  the  pseudonym  of  "Frank  Cooper." 
This  was  "Vasconselos:  a  Romance  of  the  New 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     207 

World,"  which  had  been  begun  several  years  before, 
and  cast  aside  for  pleasanter  or  more  profitable  work. 
The  wanderings  of  De  Soto  had  affected  Simms's 
imagination  ever  since  his  own  southwestern  excur 
sions  in  company  with  his  father;  and  he  had  al 
ready  pointed  out  in  print  what  a  great  romance 
could  be  constructed  out  of  the  materials  furnished 
by  the  adventures  of  the  ill-fated  discoverer.  He 
was  now  to  try  his  own  hand  on  the  theme,  and  to 
endeavor  to  atone  for  his  unsuccessful  "Damsel 
of  Darien."  Hitherto  the  fascinating  period  of 
Spanish  discovery  and  conquest  had  been  more 
fortunate  in  its  historians  like  Irving  and  Prescott 
than  in  its  romancers  like  Bird  or  Simms.  But 
could  not  something  be  done  to  raise  the  ro 
mancer's  end  of  the  balance?  Simms  resolved  to 
try,  and,  in  order  not  to  be  handicapped  by  his 
previous  failure,  to  try  under  an  assumed  name. 
Redfield,  his  publisher,  suggested  "  Frank  Cooper  " 
as  a  good  nom  de  plume,  and  so  that  gentleman's 
romance  appeared,  and  was  duly  read  and  praised. 
It  was  dedicated  to  that  typical  old  New  Yorker, 
Dr.  John  W.  Francis,  whose  burly,  honest  friend 
ship  and  hospitality  Simms  had  long  enjoyed. 

If  our  author  desired  merely  to  surpass  his  own 
youthful  efforts  and  those  of  Dr.  Bird,  he  had  his 
wish;  but  if  he  also  expected  to  write  a  great  ro 
mance,  he  failed  of  his  purpose,  and  the  cause  of  his 
failure  lay  mainly  in  himself.  "  Vasconselos " 
showed  much  power  and  no  little  audacity.  De 
Soto's  preparations  for  his  departure  from  Cuba, 


208  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

his  tournaments  and  fetes,  are  described  in  a  way  to 
make  one  read  on,  which  is  a  sign  of  some  success 
on  the  part  of  a  romancer  writing  more  than  twenty 
years  after  Scott's  death.  The  long  and  perilous 
marches  of  the  Spaniard,  his  encounters  with  hos 
tile  tribes,  his  gradual  disillusionment,  and  finally 
the  pathetic  catastrophe  of  his  death  on  the  banks  of 
the  great  river  he  discovered,  are  all  graphically  de 
scribed,  and  give  interest  and  vitality  to  the  book. 
When,  however,  the  romancer  leaves  the  chronicles 
behind  and  relies  upon  his  own  imagination,  he  fails 
dismally;  because,  as  Poe  had  said  of  him  before, 
he  cannot  distinguish  between  what  is  merely  re 
pulsive  and  what  is  genuinely  pathetic  and  tragic. 
His  heroine  is  calculated  to  move  our  pity  and  our 
regard,  save  for  the  horrible  relation  she  sustains  to 
her  brutal  uncle,  through  no  fault  of  her  own,  but 
rather  through  the  morbid  imagination  of  her  de 
lineator.  The  hero,  Philip  de  Vasconselos,  would 
excite  our  admiration  for  his  virtues,  and  our  indig 
nation  for  the  wrongs  he  undergoes  at  the  hands  of 
De  Soto,  —  the  defects  of  whose  character  are  un 
pleasantly  exaggerated,  —  were  it  not  that  Simms 
will  not  let  him  bear  those  wrongs  as  a  true  knight 
should,  but  makes  him  become  a  traitor  to  his 
countrymen,  content  to  sink  into  a  savage  chief, 
who  finds  a  solace  for  the  disappointments  of  love 
and  ambition  in  the  embrace  of  a  loving  and  noble, 
yet  still  barbarian  princess.  Bird,  though  far  in 
ferior  to  Simms  in  general  power,  did  not  make 
this  last  fatal  mistake  when  he  might  easily  have 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     209 

done  so.  Juan  Lerma,  in  "The  Infidel,"  suffers 
as  much  from  the  jealousy  of  Cortez  as  Vasconselos 
does  from  that  of  De  Soto;  nevertheless,  with 
stronger  temptations  to  become  a  traitor,  he  remains 
true  to  his  race,  and  so  preserves  our  regard. 
Vasconselos  forfeits  it,  and  so  Simms's  romance 
fails  to  fulfill  the  chief  condition  of  the  existence 
of  any  romance,  namely,  that  it  should  purify  and 
elevate  the  minds  and  hearts  of  its  readers. 

But  "Vasconselos  "  had  merits  to  which  Simms's 
next  book  can  lay  no  claim.  "  Southward  Ho !  a 
Spell  of  Sunshine,"  which  was  published  towards 
the  close  of  1854,  has  been  described  as  a  kind  of 
Southern  "Decameron,"  but  there  is  no  real  reason 
for  so  handicapping  a  book  already  weighted  down. 
It  is  true  that  its  effects  upon  the  morals  of  undis 
ciplined  readers  are  less  questionable  than  those  of 
Boccaccio's  masterpiece;  but  then  no  one  ever  ac 
cused  the  "Decameron  "  of  being  dull,  and  "South 
ward  Ho !  "  certainly  is.  It  was  simply  a  device  to 
enable  its  author  to  publish  once  more  some  of  his 
long-forgotten  short  stories.  They  are  told  by  a 
party  of  passengers  who  are  traveling  by  sea  from 
New  York  to  Charleston,  and  their  only  merit  lies  in 
the  fact  that  they  are  welcome  interruptions  to  the 
would-be  facetious  conversations  which  these  pas 
sengers  carry  on.  It  must  be  admitted,  however, 
that  as  noted  points  upon  the  coast  are  passed,  the 
book  lights  up  with  an  occasionally  felicitous  de 
scription;  and  it  is  interesting  to  find  Simms 
prophesying  that  in  fifteen  years  the  mountains  of 


210  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

North  Carolina,  a  region  with  which  he  was  thor 
oughly  familiar,  would  be  a  fashionable  resort  for 
Northern  invalids  and  pleasure  seekers.  Could  he 
wake  up  now  at  Asheville  he  would  probably  rub 
his  hands,  and  think  himself  a  better  prophet  about 
the  future  of  health  resorts  than  about  the  future 
of  his  proposed  Southern  confederacy,  a  subject  on 
which  he  permitted  himself  to  say  a  few  words  in 
this  very  olla-podrida  we  are  considering. 

But  although  the  only  portion  of  "Southward 
Ho !  "  which  would  be  likely  to  interest  a  modern 
reader  has  been  pointed  out,  it  would  not  be  fair 
to  dismiss  it  without  the  statement  that  some  of 
Simms's  friends,  like  Duyckinck,  Hayne,  and 
Cooke,  found  it  charming,  because,  as  they  said,  it 
was  written  just  as  Simms  talked.  I  for  one  am 
willing  to  believe  that  the  hearty,  genial  author  was 
a  much  better  raconteur  over  a  glass  of  punch  than 
I  have  found  him  to  be  in  the  pages  of  his  pseudo- 
Decameron. 

In  the  meantime,  Redfield  had  been  bringing 
out  a  revised  edition  of  the  best  of  the  romances. 
Darley  was  engaged  to  illustrate  them,  and  Simms 
occupied  his  spare  hours  at  Woodlands  in  correct 
ing  obvious  blunders  and  youthful  extravagances, 
and  in  writing  new  and  affectionate  dedications  to 
old  friends  like  Yeadon,  who  had  stood  sponsor 
to  "The  Partisan"  nearly  twenty  years  before. 
"Martin  Faber,"  "The  Damsel  of  Darien,"  "Pe- 
layo,"  and  a  few  other  immature  efforts  and  fail- 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.    211 

ures,  were  allowed  to  sink  into  oblivion,  but  most 
of  the  border  and  revolutionary  romances  were 
given  a  fresh  circulation  and  were  favorably  re 
ceived  by  the  press.  Perhaps  it  was  this  revival  of 
interest  in  his  work  that  made  Simms  produce  four 
romances  in  the  next  few  years,  three  of  them  wor 
thy  to  rank  with  any  he  had  previously  written. 

In  the  spring  of  1854  he  was  evidently  at  work 
on  a  new  revolutionary  romance,  for  he  was  getting 
the  minute  information  he  always  required  from 
correspondents  like  Jamison.  The  following  spring 
this  romance,  "  The  Forayers,  "  was  finished,  and 
he  was  working  on  its  sequel,  "  Eutaw,  "  —  slowly, 
indeed,  as  he  wrote  to  his  friend  John  J.  Bockie, 
of  Brooklyn,  for  he  had  a  multitude  of  smaller 
matters  on  his  hands  ;  still  he  hoped  to  finish  it 
by  July.  He  did  not  do  this,  probably  because 
he  went  to  work  on  "  Charlemont, "  the  sequel  to 
"Beauchampe,"  —  a  romance  which  should  never 
have  been  begun  and  which  has  been  noticed  suffi 
ciently.  But  "Eutaw"  was  finally  finished  in 
February,  1856;  for  its  author  had  had  a  respite 
from  some  of  his  duties  and  could  at  last  concen 
trate  his  attention  upon  it.  His  round  of  lectures 
at  the  various  villages  of  South  Carolina  was  over, 
and  he  had  cleared  some  money  and  increased  his 
reputation.  His  editorial  career  also  was  over,  for 
ten  years;  for  the  last  publisher  of  the  "Quar 
terly,"  Mortimer,  had  insisted  on  quarreling  with 
his  editor,  and  had  presumed  to  think  that  he  him 
self  could  edit  as  well  as  publish.  That  he  did  not 


212  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

carry  out  his  threat  was  due  in  part  to  the  fact  that 
the  creditors  he  had  made  as  publisher  determined 
to  sue  him.  How  much  Simms  got  of  his  hard 
earned  salary,  which  may  have  been  increased  after 
the  first  year  to  fifteen  hundred  dollars,  is  not  to 
be  ascertained,  but  is  easy  to  guess  at.1 

Probably  no  other  man  in  the  South  could  have 
done  as  much  as  Simms  did  between  the  inception 
of  "The  Forayers"  and  the  completion  of  "Eu- 
taw."  As  we  have  seen,  he  was  editing  his  review 
during  most  of  the  time,  was  writing  "Charle- 
mont,"  was  delivering  lectures  and  addressing  fe 
male  seminaries,  and  was  revising  his  old  romances. 
In  addition  to  this  he  was  taking  his  usual  trips, 
talking  politics,  having  a  play  represented  at 
Charleston,  contributing  to  Duyckinck's  "Cyclo 
paedia  of  American  Literature,"  and  superintending 
all  the  planting  at  Woodlands,  owing  to  the  pro 
tracted  ill  health  of  his  father-in-law,  Mr.  Roach. 
In  the  face  of  all  this,  could-  he  be  expected  to 
write  anything  that  should  be  worthy  of  the  atten 
tion  of  posterity?  It  would  hardly  seem  so;  and 
3ret  "The  Forayers"  and  "Eutaw"  show  no  sign 
of  flagging  powers,  and  are  among  the  most  inter 
esting  of  all  the  Revolutionary  romances. 

They  take  up  the  history  of  that  exciting  period 
just  where  it  was  left  at  the  close  of  "Katharine 
Walton,"  —  at  the  point  "when,  for  the  first  time, 
the  British  were  made  to  understand  that  the  con- 

1  The  Southern    Quarterly   was  published   for  one  year  longer 
(1856)  at  Columbia,  (S.  C.),  under  the  editorship  of  Dr.  Thornwell 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     213 

fliet  was  doubtful."  The  enemy  have  now  con 
tracted  their  operations  to  what  is  called  the  "low 
country,"  and  Lord  Rawdon  has  yielded  his  com 
mand  to  Colonel  Stewart,  whom  Greene  expects  to 
engage  in  the  last  great  battle  at  Eutaw  Springs. 
The  partisans  Marion,  Sumter,  Pickens,  Horry, 
Lee,  and  the  two  Hamptons  are  dashing  about  the 
country,  harassing  the  enemy  almost  as  much  as 
does  the  intense  heat  of  the  season.  It  is  with 
these  rapid  and  daring  movements  that  "The  For- 
ayers "  is  chiefly  concerned,  and  we  perceive  the 
appropriateness  of  its  sub-title,  "The  Raid  of  the 
Dog-Days."  "Eutaw"  of  course  concerns  itself 
with  the  battle  and  its  consequences. 

Many  of  our  old  friends,  such  as  Marion  and 
Porgy,  reappear,  and  we  once  more  glide  through 
dark  lagoons  and  tangled  undergrowth  until  we 
find  ourselves  at  rest  in  a  partisan  camp.  We  are 
present  for  the  twentieth  time,  perhaps,  at  the  mid 
night  sally,  and  witnesses  of  Tory  and  British  atro 
cities.  But  new  characters  are  introduced  who 
soon  win  our  regard,  even  though  they  are  by  no 
means  to  be  considered  creations.  Again  we  have 
the  story  of  the  true  love  that  does  not  run  smooth 
because  a  villainous  Tory  will  presume  to  fall  in 
love  with  our  hero's  sweetheart.  As  usual  our  hero 
insists  on  falling  in  love  with  the  daughter  of  an 
enemy,  and  in  running  all  sorts  of  risks  to  obtain 
a  meeting  with  her.  Another  old  manor  house  is 
besieged  by  ruffians,  and  once  more  the  common 
places  of  romances  in  general  are  brought  in  to  eke 


214  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

out  the  materials  which  have  already  stood  Simms  in 
good  stead  for  a  dozen  or  more  volumes.  But  we 
read  on,  and  grow  excited  when  the  heroine  is  car 
ried  off,  and  when  her  little  brother  is  subjected 
to  a  captivity  the  rigors  of  which  he  contrives  to 
abate  by  interesting  his  jailer,  Hell-Fire  Dick,  in 
the  adventures  of  a  gentleman  of  a  somewhat  dif 
ferent  persuasion,  Bunyan's  immortal  Pilgrim. 
We  find  ourselves  marveling  at  the  scouts  who  pur 
sue  impossible  trails  over  impossible  places;  we 
grow  boys  again,  and  long  to  shoot  with  such  un 
erring  precision  and  to  ride  such  races  and  fight 
such  battles  as  these  hearty  partisans  do  every  day 
without  thinking  that  there  is  anything  unusual  in 
it.  Of  course  if  our  blood  is  cool,  we  are  apt  to 
pause  over  tangled  sentences,  and  to  wonder  why 
Simms  would  fancy  he  was  writing  romance  when 
he  was  really  writing  history.  But  many  a  boy  has 
read  "Eutaw"  without  stopping  for  these  things, 
and  there  are  probably  older  readers  who  do  the 
same. 

As  romantic  in  its  incidents  as  either  of  these 
stories,  but  much  fuller  of  faults,  was  the  play 
"Michael  Bonham,"  which  was  produced  at  the 
Charleston  Theatre  on  the  nights  of  March  26 
and  27,  1855.  But  for  the  curious  fact  that  the 
hero  of  the  play  was  then  living  in  Carolina,  and 
that  it  was  the  only  one  of  Simms' s  numerous  dramas 
that  was  ever  performed,  all  mention  of  it  could  be 
safely  omitted.  Simms  had  written  it  some  three 
years  before,  and  had  published  it  both  in  the 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     215 

"Southern  Literary  Messenger"  and  in  pamphlet 
form.  This  latter  fact  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
remembered  in  Charleston,  for  the  "Courier"  of 
the  morning  of  the  26th  stated  the  contrary,  and 
proceeded  to  give  its  readers  sonie  idea  of  what 
they  might  expect.  General  Milledge  L.  Bonham, 
the  hero,  was  a  well-known  man.  He  had  been  one 
of  the  most  daring  associates  of  Bowie  and  Crockett 
and  Travis,  or,  as  the  "Courier"  somewhat  mag- 
niloquently  put  it,  of  "the  small,  but  hardy  band 
of  crusaders  who  first  planted  near  the  'Great 
River '  of  the  American  Spaniards  the  lone-star 
flag,  which  has  been  lovingly  and  blandly  absorbed 
by  the  standard  sheet  of  Stars  and  Stripes."  More 
recently  he  had  served  with  distinction  in  the 
Mexican  war,  and  it  was  probably  this  fact  which 
suggested  to  Simms  the  propriety  of  writing  his 
drama.  No  thought  of  having  it  performed  seems 
to  have  entered  Simms' s  mind  until  Dickinson  put 
"Norman  Maurice"  in  rehearsal  and  the  manager 
of  the  Charleston  Theatre  applied  for  permission  to 
have  "The  Golden  Christmas"  dramatized. 

The  faults  of  "Norman  Maurice"  are  all  con 
spicuous  in  "Michael  Bonham,"  and  how  the  origi 
nal  of  the  romantic  hero  could  have  been  flattered 
at  finding  himself  carried  through  a  series  of  duels 
and  intrigues  and  cut-throat  adventures  is  hard  to 
conceive.  It  is  true  that  in  some  respects  it  was 
an  acting  play ;  that  is,  it  might  have  suited  a  non- 
critical  audience  who  wanted  plenty  of  movement 
and  striking  situations,  and  who  did  not  care  a 


216  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

straw  whether  the  dramatist  observed  the  laws  of 
dramatic  construction,  or  whether  he  borrowed 
wholesale  from  other  dramatists.  This  is  the  most 
that  can  be  said  for  it.  The  only  character  that  is 
at  all  interesting  is  David  Crockett,  who  is  ab 
surdly  represented  as  following  Bonham  into  San 
Antonio  as  a  subordinate  when  the  latter  could  not 
have  been  much  over  twenty  years  old.  In  short, 
when  read  in  the  closet  the  play  seems  to  be  the 
work  of  a  precocious  youth  of  eighteen  rather  than 
of  a  practiced  writer  and  constant  student  and  spec 
tator  of  the  drama. 

Still,  as  one  performance  was  to  be  given  in  aid 
of  the  Ladies'  Calhoun  Monument  Association, 
and  as  the  newspapers  had  pronounced  it  to  be  ad 
mirable,  a  large  audience  greeted  it  with  "frequent 
demonstrations  of  applause,"  which  "testified  their 
gratification  at  this  offering  from  the  pen  of  one 
who"  had  "ministered  to  Southern  readers  in  all 
the  modes  of  authorship."  "The  cast  was  a  good 
one,"  continued  the  "Courier,"  "and  the  general 
effect  was  more  than  creditable." 

Simms  was  so  nervously  interested  in  the  success 
of  his  offspring  that  he  could  not  be  induced  to  at 
tend;  but  he  wrote  his  friend  Major  Hammond  an 
account  of  the  two  performances,  and  intimated  that 
a  third  might  be  given  which  would  put  some  much- 
needed  money  into  his  pocket.  Whether  his  ex 
pectations  were  realized  does  not  appear,  but  it  is 
certain  that  he  was  slightly  chagrined  at  the  fact 
that  the  audience  did  not  call  for  the  author.  To 


DBEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMAEES.     217 

this  Hammond  replied  rather  humorously :  "  What 
author  was  ever  called  out  in  your  goodly  city? 
I  never  heard  of  one.  The  folks  did  not  know  the 
compliment,  —  they  paid  the  very  highest  known  to 
them,  and  quite  unusual,  too,  that  of  encoring 
scenes!  A  song  might  do.  But  scenes!  it  is 
surely  a  rara  avis.  Saw  Bonham  (M.  L.)  yester 
day.  His  vanity  is  flattered.  He  was  gratified  at 
your  success,  of  which  I  told  him." 

But  the  good  people  of  Charleston  who  ap 
plauded  Simms's  scenes  were  fast  preparing  to  be 
come  actors  in  a  much  more  serious  drama.  It 
must  not  be  imagined  that,  because  little  has  been 
said  of  politics  lately,  the  atmosphere  about  our 
fiery  Southerner  was  clearing.  Not  a  whit  of  it. 
It  is  true  that  he  no  longer  had  Beverley  Tucker's 
letters  to  stir  him  up ;  but  he  had  the  two  Ham 
monds  and  Jamison  to  talk  to,  and  the  "Charles 
ton  Mercury "  and  his  review  to  write  for,  and 
numerous  squabbles  among  the  politicians  at 
Washington  to  keep  up  with,  so  that  he  was  by  no 
means  free  from  nightmares  even  while  he  was  in 
dulging  in  his  most  delightful  romantic  dreams. 
When  Tucker  died,  it  occurred  to  Simms  that  a 
biography  of  such  a  distinguished  exponent  of  the 
states-rights  school  would  be  an  excellent  handbook 
of  politics  for  the  rising  generation.  He  accord 
ingly  set  to  work  to  secure  information,  but  for 
some  unknown  reason  soon  forebore  the  task.  He 
was  by  no  means  idle,  however,  in  sowing  the  seeds 
which  Tucker  had  scattered  broadcast.  Besides  his 


218  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

published  articles  and  editorials,  and  the  stray 
allusions  made  to  politics  in  his  books,  he  used 
his  lecturing  tours  and  his  vast  correspondence  as 
means  to  the  desired  end.  Young  politicians  out 
side  of  South  Carolina  wrote  to  him  for  advice. 
One,  a  Mr.  Henry  Hughes,  of  Port  Gibson,  Mis 
sissippi,  author  of  a  "Treatise  on  Sociology"  which 
Simms  had  praised  in  the  "Mercury,"  addressed 
him  as  the  acknowledged  head  of  the  new  school  of 
Southern  thinkers,  and  remarked,  "When  we  Mis- 
sissippians  want  to  reason  about  home  matters,  we 
turn  towards  South  Carolina  as  naturally  almost  as 
pagans  to  an  oracle." 

His  correspondents  upon  this  subject  were  not 
all  Southerners.  When  good,  facing-both-ways 
gentlemen  from  the  North  wrote  school  histories 
of  the  United  States,  they  were  always  particularly 
anxious  to  get  a  statement  from  Simms  that  their 
books  contained  nothing  that  would  shock  a  South 
ern  mind.  When  a  fiery  editor  of  Columbia, 
South  Carolina,  attacked  the  "Lady's  Book"  for 
an  article  containing  alleged  abolition  sentiments, 
Mr.  Godey,  after  wringing  his  hands  and  exclaim 
ing  that  he  had  published  his  magazine  for  twenty 
years  and  not  one  line  against  the  South  had  it 
contained,  wrote  to  Simms  beseeching  that  he 
would  testify  to  the  standing  of  the  "Lady's 
Book  "  on  all  such  questions  and  pacify  De  Leon, 
the  editor  of  the  "Telegraph."  Simms  did  pacify 
De  Leon,  but  Godey  wrote  presently  to  say  that 
he  wished  some  one  would  help  him  out  of  the 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     219 

scrape  he  was  in  at  the  North  for  having  declared 
that  he  had  never  published  a  line  against  the 
South.  The  poor  man  was  deeply  aggrieved  that  he 
could  not  be  allowed  to  face  both  ways  forever. 
Yet  he  was  no  worse  than  thousands  of  his  coun 
trymen,  who  by  their  submission  to  the  adherents 
of  the  false  god  of  the  country  did  almost  as  much 
to  rivet  his  chains  upon  that  country  as  his  more 
vociferous  priests  and  worshipers,  and  who  have 
received  their  due  reward  for  all  time  at  the  hands 
of  the  author  of  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin."  Certainly 
nothing  that  he  wrote  to  Simms  was  worse  than  the 
following  sentence  which  is  taken  from  a  letter 
written  by  an  author  not  unknown  to  fame :  "I  am 
half  a  Southerner  myself;  and  although  I  hap 
pened  to  be  the  son  of  honest  Northerners,  I  am 
not  averse  to  a  single  item  peculiar  to  your  part  of 
our  common  country."  It  really  seems  as  if  some 
of  his  Northern  friends  were  a  little  afraid  of 
Simms 's  vehement  way  of  expressing  opinions 
which  were  natural  enough  in  him,  but  which  were 
rather  unnatural  in  persons  born  in  colder  lati 
tudes.  It  may  be  suspected  that  he  liked  better 
those  friends  who,  like  Bryant,  could  hold  to  their 
own  opinions  and  still  be  sincere  in  their  affection. 
That  he  was  vehement  enough  in  expressing  his 
opinions,  no  matter  where  he  was,  is  evidenced  by 
the  fact  that  General  James  Grant  Wilson  once 
heard  him  say,  suiting  his  gestures  to  his  words: 
"If  it  comes  to  blows  between  the  North  and  the 
South,  we  will  crush  you  [the  North]  as  I  would 
crush  an  egg." 


220  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

He  was  soon  to  be  taught  that  a  man  can  go 
too  far  in  the  expression  of  opinions  very  honestly 
held.  Although  some  stray  lectures  delivered  in 
Northern  cities  had  not  been  very  favorably  re 
ceived,  he  conceived  the  project  of  undertaking  an 
extended  lecturing  tour  in  the  winter  of  1855. 
He  does  not  seem  to  have  matured  his  plans,  al 
though  he  gave  several  lectures  in  small  Southern 
towns ;  but  in  the  fall  of  the  following  year  he  did 
succeed  in  arranging  quite  an  elaborate  programme. 
He  was  to  begin  his  lectures  in  New  York  in  re 
sponse  to  an  invitation  signed  by  George  Bancroft, 
with  whom  his  relations  were  always  friendly,  Wil 
liam  Cullen  Bryant,  Evert  A.  Duyckinck,  Dr. 
John  W.  Francis,  and  others.  Then  he  was  to  go 
as  far  east  as  Boston  and  as  far  west  as  Detroit, 
taking  in  many  of  the  intermediate  towns. 

Accordingly,  on  the  night  of  Tuesday,  Novem 
ber  18,  1856,  he  addressed  a  fair  audience  in  Dr. 
Chapin's  Church  of  the  Divine  Unity,  on  a  sub 
ject  identical  with  that  of  a  volume  heretofore 
criticised:  "South  Carolina  in  the  Revolution." 
The  "Herald"  of  the  following  morning  described 
him  as  being  prepossessing  in  appearance,  with  a 
very  rapid  and  forcible  delivery.  The  "  Tribune  " 
said  that  the  lecture  lasted  for  an  hour  and  a  half, 
and  was  heard  in  silence  save  for  a  round  of  ap 
plause  at  the  end.  It  closed  its  notice  with  a  brief 
comment  on  the  bad  taste  of  the  lecturer  in  intro 
ducing  his  subject  with  some  remarks  derogatory 
to  Mr.  Sumner. 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     221 

The  second  lecture  was  fixed  for  Friday,  No 
vember  21.  The  "Herald"  of  Saturday,  under 
the  head  of  "City  Intelligence, " contained  the  fol 
lowing  reference  to  it:  "Simms's  Lecture.  W. 
Gilmore  Simms,  according  to  advertisement  and 
previous  announcement,  was  to  deliver  the  second 
lecture  of  his  course  in  the  Rev.  Dr.  Chapin's 
church  last  evening;  subject,  'The  Appalachians: 
a  Southern  Idyll,  descriptive  of  Southern  Life, 
Manners,  Scenery,  etc. '  Five  minutes  before  eight 
o'clock,  the  time  appointed  for  the  lecture,  there 
was  an  audience  of  three  persons  present.  The 
church  was  well  lighted  and  warmed,  but  none  of 
the  committee  having  appeared,  the  sexton  only  ad 
mitted  the  people  to  the  vestibule  of  the  church. 
At  eight  o'clock,  there  was  an  audience  of  six  per 
sons,  not  including  the  reporters.  From  eight  to 
eight  and  a  half  a  few  others  dropped  in,  making 
an  audience,  all  counted,  of  thirteen  gentlemen  and 
four  ladies.  The  lecturer  still  not  appearing,  the 
gas  was  turned  off,  the  doors  locked,  and  the  assem 
bly  adjourned  sine  die,  looking  at  their  tickets." 

Two  days  later  the  "Herald"  commented  edito 
rially  upon  Simms's  failure,  declaring  that  he  had 
received  fair  treatment  and  that  his  undertaking 
had  been  a  quixotic  one.  It  remarked  that  a 
South  Carolina  audience  would  not  have  let  off  so 
easily  any  Northern  lecturer  that  might  have  gone 
thither  to  defend  Charles  Sumner.  The  "  Tribune  " 
of  the  same  day,  November  24,  gave  nearly  two  of 
its  editorial  columns  to  a  defense  of  the  position 


222  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

previously  taken  by  Sabine  as  to  the  services  of 
South  Carolina  in  the  Revolution.  It  also  advised 
Simms  to  omit  his  allusions  to  Sumner,  adding: 
"It  will  be  quite  time  enough  to  vituperate  Mr. 
Sumner  after  having  first  refuted  him."  The 
"Evening  Post,"  in  consideration,  no  doubt,  of  Bry 
ant's  friendship  for  the  lecturer,  alluded  to  the 
dismal  affair  as  briefly  and  favorably  as  was  pos 
sible  under  the  circumstances. 

Simms  naturally  felt  deeply  hurt  at  what  had  oc 
curred.  He  acted  quietly,  however,  and  canceled 
all  his  other  engagements,  refusing  to  accept  invi 
tations  from  certain  quarters  where  it  was  believed 
that  the  New  Yorkers  had  dealt  too  harshly  with 
him.  The  Southern  press  took  up  his  cause  and 
several  strictly  Southern  lecturing  tours  were 
mapped  out  for  him.  But  he  was  in  no  humor  for 
public  speaking  at  present,  even  to  friendly  audi 
ences,  and  he  returned  to  the  quiet  of  Woodlands 
with  a  sigh  of  relief.  After  two  months'  rest  he 
took  the  platform  again,  and  lectured  at  Baltimore, 
Washington,  Richmond,  Petersburg,  Norfolk,  and 
other  Southern  towns,  with  decidedly  more  success. 
At  some  of  these  places  he  eschewed  political  sub 
jects,  preferring  such  unobjectionable  themes  as 
"The  Choice  of  a  Profession  "  and  "Early  Southern 
Discoverers." 

It  is  impossible  not  to  sympathize  with  our  im 
pulsive  lecturer  in  his  troubles,  even  though  they 
were  of  his  own  making.  It  was  so  natural  to  him 
to  think  that  any  cause  he  espoused  must  be  right, 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     223 

that  he  never  stopped  to  think  whether  it  would  be 
expedient  to  endeavor  to  convince  other  people  of 
the  truth  of  that  cause.  In  his  eyes  Sumner  had 
been  guilty  of  the  grossest  of  crimes  in  slandering 
the  South  and  its  institutions,  and  although  he 
would  probably  have  hesitated  to  use  the  historical 
bludgeon  himself,  he  had  no  hesitation  in  saying 
that  Sumner  had  got  only  what  he  deserved.  In 
the  South  it  was  common  enough  for  a  man's  body 
to  be  responsible  for  the  indiscreet  use  of  his 
tongue,  and  not  many  Southerners  could  under 
stand  how  a  few  blows  had  made  Sumner  a  hero 
throughout  the  North.  We  can  see  now,  of  course, 
that  it  was  in  the  worst  possible  taste  to  make  any 
allusion,  save  one  of  regret,  to  the  horrible  occur 
rence  which  had  deprived  Massachusetts  of  her  able 
and  fearless  senator.  And  yet  if  slavery  could 
make  a  man  who  was  dearly  beloved  and  esteemed 
by  those  who  knew  him  best  descend  to  such  un 
called-for  violence,  it  could  make  an  eager  partisan 
defend  that  violence  even  in  the  house  of  its  vic 
tim's  friends.  We  do  not  know  exactly  what 
Simms  said,1  for  his  remarks  were  extempore,  and 
he  probably  went  further  than  he  had  intended; 
but  it  is  almost  certain  that  if  he  were  living  now, 
he  would  be  one  of  the  first  to  condemn  his  own  ut 
terances.  For  the  man,  if  an  impetuous  partisan 
and  a  good  hater,  was  nevertheless  as  honest  as  the 
day,  and  full  of  that  true  courage  which  is  never 

1  The  Times,  which  gave  the  longest  account  of  the  lecture,  did 
not  give  the  language  used  in  reference  to  Sumner. 


224  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

ashamed  to  make  confession  of  wrong-doing.  He 
really  thought  that  he  was  doing  the  New  Yorkers 
a  great  favor  in  opening  their  eyes  to  the  baseness 
of  Sumner  and  the  abolitionists,  and  when  he 
found  that  he  would  not  be  listened  to,  he  was 
more  hurt  and  sorry  than  angry.  He  could  not 
show  his  face  even  to  his  friends,  and  he  apologized 
to  one  of  them  for  not  visiting  him  in  the  following 
pathetic  words :  "  I  had  been  so  defeated,  so  disap 
pointed  of  my  expectation,  that  I  was  in  no  mood 
for  society,  even  that  of  friends;  and  I  hastened 
home  to  my  forest  cover,  with  the  feeling  of  the 
wounded  hart  flying  to  the  thicket." 

From  the  time  of  this  retreat  from  the  hostile 
North  to  the  day  of  his  death,  Simms  was  in  many 
respects  an  altered  man.  Hitherto  he  had  borne 
up  against  unfavorable  criticism  on  the  part  of 
strangers  and  of  his  own  people,  and  against  con 
stant  pecuniary  embarrassments,  with  a  strength 
and  cheerfulness  that  were  sometimes  marvelous. 
His  constitution  had  seemed  to  be  herculean;  no 
amount  of  labor  could  daunt  or  fatigue  him.  In 
his  amusements  as  well  as  in  his  routine  work  he 
had  always  shown  a  vim  and  zest  that  had  been 
the  envy  and  despair  of  milder  and  soberer  spirits 
like  Timrod  and  Hayne.  But  now  a  change  comes 
over  him,  which  is  probably  more  visible  to  the  bi 
ographer  who  has  studied  his  correspondence  than 
it  was  to  the  friends  who  saw  him  from  day  to  day. 
It  is  a  gradual  change,  premonitions  of  which  are 
not  wanting  even  before  this  memorable  autumn  of 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     225 

1856.  He  begins  to  refer  to  the  state  of  his 
health,  declares  that  he  is  overworked,  and  that 
what  he  has  already  accomplished  has  been  to  little 
or  no  purpose.  He  is  becoming  a  great  sufferer 
from  catarrh  and  from  some  of  thdse  painful  al 
though  not  dangerous  complaints  which  are  natural 
to  sedentary  men,  —  dyspepsia  and  its  attendant 
ills.  He  becomes  more  querulous,  although  he  can 
never  conceal  his  natural  kindness  of  heart.  He 
complains  of  imaginary  slights  from  old  friends 
like  Thompson  of  the  "Messenger;"  he  exagger 
ates  a  brief  depreciatory  notice  of  his  poetry  in  the 
New  York  "Tribune"  into  a  persistent  endeavor 
on  the  part  of  the  North  to  destroy  his  literary  rep 
utation.  He  takes  a  gloomier  view  of  the  political 
situation,  for  which  he  had  abundant  cause  apart 
from  any  predisposition  to  paint  things  in  dark  col 
ors,  and  finally  he  allows  over  two  years  to  go  by 
without  publishing  anything  of  note.  This  last 
fact  will  be  perhaps  accepted  as  sufficient  proof 
that  something  was  wrong  with  him. 

Nor  was  he  suffering  entirely  from  a  morbid 
fancy,  as  some  of  his  friends  tried  to  assure  him. 
His  health  was  being  gradually  undermined  by  the 
great  strain  to  which  he  had  been  subjecting  his 
constitution  for  years;  his  wife  and  children,  too, 
were  not  infrequently  ailing,  and  his  father-in-law 
was  a  chronic  sufferer  from  the  gout.  Unless  he 
could  keep  his  eye  on  everything  that  went  on  at 
Woodlands,  he  was  certain  to  lose  money.  The 
negroes  were  lazy  and  pampered,  the  overseers 


226  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

were  thoroughly  unreliable.  He  had  come  to  the 
plantation  with  a  debt  on  his  shoulders,  and  in 
twenty  years  he  was  still  in  arrears,  although  prob 
ably  not  to  the  same  parties.  His  romances  were 
no  longer  in  such  demand  as  when  "The  Yemassee  " 
went  through  its  three  large  editions  in  a  year,  nor 
were  the  magazines  so  glad  to  take  his  pieces  or  to 
pay  as  good  prices  for  them.  And  yet  his  family 
was  a  large  one,  and  his  children  were  year  by  year 
becoming  a  greater  expense  to  him.  It  is  no  won 
der,  then,  that  a  tone  of  despondency  becomes  no 
ticeable  in  his  letters,  which  deepens  as  fire  sweeps 
away  his  possessions,  as  his  children  die  of  dread 
diseases,  as,  to  crown  all,  the  storm  bursts  upon  his 
beloved  South  and  changes  the  whole  face  of  things. 
Yet  although  despondency  masters  him  at  times, 
he  still  has  many  things  to  make  him  happy,  and  is 
far  from  succumbing  to  his  fancies  and  drifting 
into  an  idle,  purposeless  life.  He  still  plans  new 
romances  even  if  he  does  throw  all  save  one  aside; 
he  still  dreams  of  dramatic  success,  and  writes  sev 
eral  acts  of  a  Spanish  tragedy,  "Don  Carlos;  "  he 
still  collects  revolutionary  letters  and  documents, 
and  slowly  revises  his  history  of  South  Carolina ; 
and  finally  he  still  dabbles  in  poetry  and  amuses 
himself  by  collecting  his  fugitive  "  Areytos  "  from 
forgotten  magazines  and  from  no  less  forgotten  vol 
umes  of  his  own.  But  while  this  work  was  plea 
sant  if  not  profitable,  he  had  another  and  a  greater 
source  of  pleasure.  He  had  always  been  a  sociable 
man,  and  had  longed  for  intellectual  companion- 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     227 

ship,  which  up  to  this  time  he  could  get  only  at 
the  North.  As  a  young  man  he  had  never  been 
freely  admitted  to  the  cultured  society  of  his  na 
tive  city,  and  although  this  exclusiveness  had  re 
laxed  as  he  had  grown  older  and  had  made  his 
mark,  it  had  nevertheless  continued  to  wound  him, 
and  to  render  him  uncomfortable  even  in  the  com 
pany  of  such  of  his  contemporaries  as  had  long  since 
acknowledged  his  worth.  Now,  however,  he  had 
gradually  gathered  around  him  a  band  of  younger 
men,  all  ambitious  and  some  devoted  to  that  severe 
mistress,  Poetry,  whom  he  had  himself  served  with 
such  devotion  and  with  so  little  success.  These 
men  looked  up  to  him,  and  were  zealous  in  fighting 
his  battles.  They  formed  a  club  and  placed  him 
at  the  head,  and  many  were  the  rubbers  of  whist  that 
were  played  amid  the  clinking  of  glasses  and  the 
clatter  of  tongues  eager  to  improve  the  few  rare 
moments  when  "Father  Abbot"  was  not  address 
ing  his  disciples.  At  such  meetings  Simms  was  in 
his  element.  There  was  no  one  to  contradict  him, 
hardly  any  one  to  criticise  him,  and  he  discoursed  on 
every  imaginable  subject  with  equal  ease  and  vol 
ubility.  What  cared  he  if  neighbors  two  blocks 
away  astonished  his  host  the  next  morning  by  smil 
ing,  and  saying,  "So  you  had  Simms  with  you 
last  night.  We  could  hear  him  declaiming  as  far 
away  as  my  house."  He  went  on,  and  thundered 
out  one  of  Daniel  Webster's  speeches,  or  a  back 
woods  joke,  or  a  poem  of  his  own,  as  the  case  might 
be.  And  the  club  applauded,  even  if  Timrod  did 


228  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

occasionally  give  vent  to  an  undertone  expression 
of  weariness. 

Among  the  leading  members  of  this  little  co 
terie  were  Paul  Hayne,  Henry  Timrod,  John 
Dickson  Bruns,  Samuel  Lord,  Junior,  F.  Peyre 
Porcher,  Richard  Michel,  Hayne's  brother-in- 
law,  Samuel  Y.  Tupper,  and  Benjamin  J.  "Whaley. 
Of  these,  Bruns,  Porcher,  and  Michel  became  phy 
sicians,  and  Lord  and  Whaley  followed  the  law. 
Mr.  Tupper  was  the  business  man  of  the  party,  and 
Hayne  and  Timrod  were  the  literary  Bohemians. 
It  is  strange  that  of  these  nine  men  the  only  three 
that  have  died  are  those  who  were  specially  inclined 
to  lead  a  literary  life,  —  for  Dr.  Bruns  wrote  some 
pleasant  verses  and  was  a  man  of  great  taste  and 
cultivation.1  Of  the  survivors,  all  save  Dr.  Michel 
are  representative  citizens  of  Charleston,  that  gen 
tleman  having  made  Montgomery,  Alabama,  his 
home.  The  club  they  formed  was  a  purely  infor 
mal  affair,  which  met  in  turn  at  the  houses  of  the 
members;  but  when  he  was  in  Charleston  Simms 
would  generally  have  the  meetings  in  his  own 
house,  which  he  facetiously  called  his  "wigwam." 

In  the  mornings,  when  he  was  not  at  his  prin 
ter's,  he  would  while  away  the  hours  in  the  office 
of  one  of  his  proteges,  generally  in  that  of  Lord, 
who  doubtless  was  not  as  overrun  with  clients  in  the 

1  Since  the  above  was  written,  Mr.  Tupper  has  died,  full  of 
years  and  honors.  I  have  to  regret  the  fact  that  on  my  visit  to 
Charleston  to  gather  materials  for  this  book,  I  was  unable  to  have 
a  conversation  with  Mr.  Tupper.  Extracts  from  letters  written 
by  that  gentleman  will  be  given  hereafter. 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     229 

latter  part  of  the  fifties  as  he  is  to-day.  In  the  af 
ternoons  Russell's  book-shop  was  the  rendezvous. 
It  was  situated  on  busy  King  Street,  and  looking 
out  from  it  one  could  get  a  glimpse  of  Charleston's 
best  people  passing  and  repassing.  Seats  were 
arranged  in  the  rear  of  the  shop  for  special  guests 
such  as  Simms,  Petigru,  Mitchell  King,  who  used 
to  buttonhole  Russell  and  repeat  long  passages  from 
the  Latin  poets,  to  the  worthy  bookseller's  great 
bewilderment,  Alfred  Huger,  Dr.  Samuel  Henry 
Dickson,  and  Father  Lynch.  There,  too,  might 
be  found  Simms's  spare  and  ascetic  friend,  the 
Rev.  James  W.  Miles,  and  the  Hon.  William  J. 
Gray  son,  Petigru 's  biographer  and  the  apologist 
for  slavery.  Of  the  younger  men,  besides  Hayne 
and  Lord,  one  has  been  spared  to  win  a  world-wide 
reputation  for  the  classical  knowledge  of  which  he 
had  just  laid  the  foundations  in  Germany,  Dr. 
Basil  L.  Gildersleeve.  Another  recent  graduate 
of  a  German  university  was  David  Ramsay,  a 
grandson  of  the  historian,  destined  soon  to  lose  his 
life  at  Fort  Wagner;  and  as  brilliant  as  any  of 
those  that  have  been  mentioned  was  William  R. 
Taber,  the  young  editor  of  the  "Mercury,"  who 
was  killed  in  a  duel  in  September,  1856. 

One  outcome  of  these  gatherings  at  Russell's  was 
the  appearance  in  April,  1857,  of  the  first  number 
of  "Russell's  Magazine,"  the  best  publication  of 
the  kind  ever  undertaken  in  Charleston.  Hayne 
and  a  Mr.  W.  B.  Carlisle  were  the  editors,  but 
Hayne  did  all  the  work.  He  was  gallantly  assisted 


230  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

by  Simms,  Timrod,  Brnns,  Grayson,  and  others, 
and  the  magazine  ran  for  three  years.  It  died  in 
March,  1860,  and  it  excites  our  admiration  for 
having  lived  so  long  in  such  days  of  confusion. 
It  stood  up  stanchly  for  everything  Southern,  par 
ticularly  for  Simms ;  whenever  Hayne  got  a  chance 
to  praise  his  friend,  he  did  so,  and  did  it  well  and 
honestly.  Sometimes  he  overdid  the  matter,  as 
when  he  wrote  or  allowed  to  be  published  a  se 
vere  critique  on  Dana's  "Household  Book  of  Po 
etry,"  because  Simms  had  not  been  represented 
therein.  And  when  the  "Courier"  refused  to 
publish  Dana's  calm  and  fair  letter  of  remon 
strance,  which  was  afterwards  sent  to  Simms  and 
is  still  preserved,  a  further  proof  was  furnished  of 
the  harmful  effects  of  the  spirit  of  sectional  hatred 
and  suspicion  that  was  abroad  in  the  land. 

But  Hayne,  though  at  times  a  partisan  where  his 
friends  were  concerned,  was  essentially  a  noble 
spirit;  the  noblest  and  most  charming  character, 
with  the  exception  of  Simms,  to  be  found  among 
Southern  writers,  one  is  almost  tempted  to  say, 
among  Southern  gentlemen.  He  wrote  the  most 
delightful  letters  of  all  of  Simms 's  correspondents. 
He  was  always  loyal,  always  frank,  always  the  gen 
tle  lover  of  what  seemed  to  him  to  be  true  and  beau 
tiful.  When  he  traveled  from  home  his  genial 
nature  won  the  love  of  men  like  Fields  and  Long 
fellow.  No  more  simple  and  refined  gentleman 
was  ever  nurtured  in  the  old  South.  If  he  lacked 
Simms's  vigor  and  powers  of  varied  accomplish- 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     231 

ment,  or  Timrod's  artistic  self-control,  his  genius 
was,  nevertheless,  more  receptive,  more  keenly  alive 
to  the  beauties  of  nature  and  of  art.  Without  lack 
ing  virility,  he  charms  chiefly  by  his  possession  of 
traits  of  character  distinctively  feminine.  His  gen 
tleness,  his  receptivity,  his  delicacy  of  feeling,  his 
facility  in  surrendering  himself  to  the  domination 
of  master  minds,  are  all  feminine  traits,  some  of 
which  have  impaired  the  value  of  his  poetry,  but 
which  have  combined  to  give  a  unique  charm  to  his 
personality. 

"Russell's"  was  not  Hayne's  first  editorial  un 
dertaking.  He  had  helped  W.  C.  Richards  on 
the  "Southern  Literary  Gazette,"  a  weekly  pub 
lished  in  Charleston  during  the  early  fifties,  and 
had  been  associate  editor  of  a  Washington  weekly, 
the  "Spectator,"  which  was  published  by  a  cer 
tain  Augustus  Harvey.  This  position  had  been  got 
for  him  by  Simms,  who  never  tired  of  helping  his 
friends;  but  it  may  be  inferred  from  Hayne's  let 
ters  that  he  reaped  neither  honors  nor  pecuniary 
rewards  from  his  connection  with  the  short-lived 
"Spectator."  It  is  pathetic  to  learn  that  after  all 
his  exertions  he  could  secure  only  five  subscribers 
for  Harvey's  journal  in  the  whole  city  of  Charles 
ton.  But  Hayne  was  primarily  a  poet,  and  what 
ever  may  be  thought  of  the  quality  and  permanence 
of  his  work,  the  brave  struggle  he  made  to  live  for 
the  sake  of  his  art  will  always  endear  him,  not  only 
to  his  own  people,  but  to  all  who  can  appreciate 
heroic  self-devotion  to  noble  ends. 


232  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

Now  a  man  who  could  deliberately  set  himself 
apart  in  the  old  South  to  lead  a  literary  life  needed 
constant  encouragement,  and  there  was  no  one 
more  willing  and  able  to  give  this  encouragement 
than  Simms.  His  acquaintance  with  Hayne  began 
early  in  the  fifties,  and  to  the  day  of  his  death 
he  never  ceased  to  urge  the  latter  on  to  new 
achievements,  or  to  prophesy  great  things  of  him. 
Hayne  has  left  on  record  his  youthful  veneration 
for  Carolina's  greatest  writer,  and  he  never  failed 
to  acknowledge  how  much  Simms  had  done  to 
stimulate  him  to  creative  efforts.  It  was  not  the 
mere  puffery  of  a  clique  when  Hayne  wrote  rever 
ently  and  lovingly  of  Simms  in  "Russell's,"  and 
when  Simms  reviewed  Hayne's  poems  in  two  long 
articles  in  the  "Mercury."  Both  men  felt  what 
they  said;  both  knew  that  they  were  striving  for  a 
common  end,  —  for  the  advancement  of  their  art, 
and  especially  the  art  of  their  section.  And  if 
their  efforts  were  immature,  if  they  are  destined  to 
be  far  surpassed  by  the  creations  of  writers  nur 
tured  under  more  favorable  conditions,  it  is  idle  to 
think  that  they  worked  in  vain,  —  no  honest  work 
is  ever  in  vain,  —  for  their  examples  must  stimu 
late  future  workers  along  the  same  lines,  and  their 
productions  must  be  credited  with  having  at  least 
kept  in  exercise  the  literary  faculty,  whatever  it 
may  be,  of  the  Southern  people  at  a  time  when  it 
looked  as  if  that  faculty  must  perish  from  disuse. 

A  man  of  greater  genius  than  Hayne,  but 
equally  indebted  to  Simms  for  both  sympathy  and 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     233 

substantial  help,  was  Henry  Timrod,  son  of  the 
poet-mechanic,  William  H.  Timrod.  Simms  had 
known  Timrod 's  father,  and  he  was  among  the  first 
to  acknowledge  the  genius  of  the  son.  His  rela 
tions  with  Timrod  do  not  seem,  however,  to  have 
been  as  constantly  cordial  as  his  relations  with 
Hayne ;  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  fault  was  not 
entirely  on  Simms' s  side.  Hayne,  in  a  letter  writ 
ten  from  Charleston  on  February  9,  1860,  alludes 
to  one  unpleasantness  between  them  as  follows: 
"When  leisure  and  inclination  coincide,  will  you 
not  oblige  me  by  a  brief  review  of  Timrod 's  Poems? 
I  know,  after  what  has  occurred,  he  can  urge  no 
possible  claim  upon  your  notice,  but,  nevertheless, 
I  wish  you  would  notice  him." 

This  unpleasant  little  matter  would  deserve  obli 
vion  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  it  is  typical  of  the 
kind  of  treatment  Simms  was  constantly  receiving 
from  men  who  ought  to  have  been  his  friends.  It 
is  gratifying,  however,  to  know  that  the  estrange 
ment  did  not  last  long;  and  we  shall  see  hereafter 
that  Simms  was  able  to  render  great  assistance  to 
Timrod  in  the  terrible  years  that  immediately  fol 
lowed  the  war.  Although  Hayne  does  not  assign 
a  cause  for  the  breach  between  the  two  writers,  it 
is  easy  to  infer  what  the  true  cause  was.  Timrod 
was  critical  by  nature  and  Simms  was  vulnerable 
in  many  places.  Timrod  knew  that  he  could  write 
real  poetry,  while  Simms  could  not,  and  it  probably 
vexed  him  to  hear  the  elder  man  airing  his  often 
crude  views  upon  poetical  subjects  in  his  positive 


234  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

Johnsonian  manner.  Then  again  the  contrast  be 
tween  Simms's  magnificent  physique  and  his  own 
puny  frame  was  not  likely  to  make  the  rough  and 
ready  favors  and  approbation  of  the  veteran  au 
thor  very  acceptable. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  Timrod's  was  probably  the 
most  finely  endowed  mind  to  be  found  in  Carolina, 
or  indeed  in  the  whole  South,  at  this  period.  His 
German  blood  and  his  inherited  qualities  had  given 
him  a  greater  artistic  endowment  than  any  other 
Southern  writer,  save  Poe,  had  been  blessed  with. 
He  was  able,  except  in  the  case  of  his  sonnets,  in 
which  he  evidently  came  under  Simms's  influence, 
to  control  himself ;  was  able  to  devote  time  and  pa 
tience  to  the  polishing  and  perfection  of  his  verse ; 
and,  more  than  all,  was  able  to  distinguish  between 
subjects  that  were  proper  and  subjects  that  were 
alien  to  his  art.  In  these  respects  he  was  slightly, 
but  only  slightly,  superior  to  Hayne.  But  where 
Hayne  and  the  generality  of  Southern  poets  pos 
sessed  a  delicate  fancy,  for  the  most  part  exercised 
on  subjects  not  far  removed  from  the  common 
place,  Timrod  possessed  an  imagination  which,  if 
not  lofty  and  wide  embracing,  was  within  its  narrow 
range  characterized  by  a  singular  intensity.  He 
has  not  left  much  work  behind  him,  and  that  work 
is  marred  by  the  effects  which  constant  sickness 
and  poverty  and  the  stress  of  war  necessarily  had 
upon  his  genius;  but  he  has  left  a  few  singularly 
beautiful  poems,  and  one  at  least,  the  ode  written 
for  the  occasion  of  the  decoration  of  the  Confed- 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     235 

erate  graves  in  Magnolia  Cemetery,  that  approxi 
mates  perfection,  —  the  perfection  of  Collins,  not 
that  of  Lovelace.  That  he  was  dominated  by  Ten 
nyson,  just  as  Hayne  was  dominated  by  Tennyson 
and  William  Morris,  and  Simms  by  Wordsworth,  is 
perfectly  true ;  but  his  poetic  powers  were  not  only 
greater  than  those  of  his  brothers,  but  also  more 
akin  to  the  powers  of  the  great  model  he  set  him 
self.  Hence  I  cannot  but  believe  that  a  day  will 
come  when  his  work  will  be  more  generally  known 
than  it  is  at  present. 

But  although  Timrod  sometimes  resisted  Simms 's 
influence,  neither  he  nor  any  other  member  of  this 
interesting  group  could  wholly  escape  that  influence 
or  fail  to  look  up  to  Simms  as  the  chief  represen 
tative  of  Southern  literature,  as  the  standard  bearer 
of  a  high  cause  which  had  experienced  failure  of- 
tener  than  success.  The  more  intimately  they  knew 
the  man,  the  more  they  loved  him,  and  the  more 
they  could  overlook  his  pomposity  when  he  folded 
his  cloak  around  him,  and  began  to  discuss  the 
topic  uppermost  in  his  mind. 

Some  members  of  "the  club"  preferred  his  idle 
talk,  which,  in  the  words  of  one  of  them,  Mr.  Tup- 
per,  "was  ever  entertaining  and  frequently  in 
structive."  "His  estimate  of  prominent  politicians 
and  little  great  men  about  us  was  singularly  cor 
rect,"  continues  the  same  authority.  "He  had  a 
great  contempt  for  cant  and  affectation;  nothing 
irritated  him  more  than  the  solemn,  ponderous  talk 
of  a  blockhead  affecting  the  dignity  and  wisdom  of 
a  bishop  or  judge." 


236  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

Mr.  Tupper  also  describes  how  he  used  to  sit 
and  watch  Simms  prepare  an  article  for  immediate 
publication.  "He  would  write  page  after  page 
without  stopping  a  moment  for  reflection  or  revi 
sion,  and,  without  altering  a  word  or  reading  what 
he  had  written,"  would  let  it  go  to  the  printer,  oc 
casionally  writing  at  the  end  of  his  sheets  the  fol 
lowing  direction  to  that  functionary:  "Carefully 
revise;  I  have  no  time  to  correct  your  errors."  On 
one  occasion  Mr.  Tupper  and  Simms  were  prepar 
ing  to  go  to  a  festival  or  ball  of  the  volunteer  fire 
department,  when  the  latter  suddenly  inquired  who 
were  to  be  the  invited  guests.  Mr.  Tupper  gave 
him  the  names  of  the  most  prominent,  whereupon 
Simms  called  for  pen  and  paper,  and  in  half  an 
hour  wrote  about  twenty  stanzas  of  facetious  po 
etry,  each  stanza  giving  some  well-known  charac 
teristic  of  a  separate  guest.  These  he  read  at  the 
proper  time  with  such  effect  that  he  was  obliged  to 
reread  them  before  the  night  was  over.  He  then 
walked  to  a  fireplace  and  burned  them,  resisting 
Mr.  Tupper's  importunity  to  save  them,  by  declar 
ing  that  he  would  not  preserve  anything  that  re 
flected  on  the  infirmities  of  friends. 

Naturally  the  stories  told  about  Simms  are  not 
always  so  pleasant  as  this  one.  Yet,  while  some  of 
them  are  calculated  to  raise  a  smile  at  his  expense, 
not  one  of  them  will  make  a  discriminating  hearer 
forget  the  real  excellence  of  the  man.  Sometimes 
even  his  young  admirers  were  tempted  to  make  his 
peculiarities  the  subject  of  a  practical  joke.  For 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.    237 

example,  Simms  prided  himself  on  his  gastronomic 
attainments,  and  in  the  person  of  Lieutenant  Porgy 
once  allowed  himself  to  grow  eloquent  over  the  del 
icacy  of  a  stew  made  of  alligator  terrapins.  But 
there  were  some  heretics  in  "the  club  "  who  did  not 
believe  that  Simms  had  ever  eaten  an  alligator  ter 
rapin,  and  they  determined  to  try  him  on  the  dish 
for  which  he  had  given  so  elaborate  a  receipt. 
They  procured  one  of  the  monsters  after  some  de 
lay  and  trouble,  and,  having  arranged  for  the  proper 
making  of  the  stew,  invited  Simms  to  supper. 
The  veteran  came,  and  was  bountifully  helped  to 
his  favorite  dish.  At  the  very  first  mouthful  he 
made  a  wry  face,  and  exclaimed:  "For  heaven's 
sake,  boys,  where  did  you  get  this  rancid  stuff?" 
"That  is  alligator  terrapin,  stewed  a  la  Porgy,  Mr. 
Simms,"  was  the  reply.  "Ah,"  said  the  discom 
fited  romancer,  "  you  must  have  made  some  mistake 
with  the  receipt." 

The  literary  inactivity  which  characterized 
Simms  after  his  return  from  the  North  in  the 
autumn  of  1856  has  been  already  described.  He 
wrote  for  "Russell's  "  and  the  "Mercury,"  and  sup 
plied  Appleton's  "New  American  Cyclopaedia," 
with  biographical  sketches,  but  he  began  new  ro 
mances  only  to  throw  them  aside.  One  of  his  re 
views  in  "Russell's"  deserves  notice  because  it 
shows  that  he  could  at  times  point  out  defects  in 
Southern  literary  work.  The  person  who  received 
this  unfavorable  but  just  criticism  was  a  small  poet 
named  Howard  H.  Caldwell,  who,  according  to 


238  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

Hayne,  instigated  in  revenge  a  nasty  attack  upon 
Simms  in  the  columns  of  the  New  Orleans  "Delta." 
Hayne  in  his  loyalty  turned  the  cold  shoulder  to 
Caldwell,  and  wrote  to  Simms  as  follows :  — 

"It  [Simms 's  career  as  a  writer]  has  been  a  fight 
against  bitter  prejudice,  miserable  provincialism  of 
tone  and  sentiment,  mean  jealousies,  and,  worse 
than  all,  that  species  of  ignorance  which  is  so  in 
vincibly  blind  and  presumptuous.  .  .  .  And  just 
such  a  contest,  modified  in  detail,  but  the  same  es 
sentially,  awaits  every  true  literary  athlete,  whose 
intellectual  battlefield  happens  to  be  in  any  part 
of  this  material,  debased,  provincial,  narrow- 
minded  South !  God  help  all  such  combatants. 
'T  is  almost  enough  to  make  one  forswear  his 
country.  I  cannot  refrain  from  picturing  to  my 
self  your  fate,  had  you  removed  at  any  early  age 
to  Massachusetts  or  Europe.  Prosperity,  praise, 
*  troops  of  friends,'  and  admirers,  but  not  what  you 
now  possess,  and  which  must  be  a  proud  consola 
tion,  —  the  consciousness  of  having  been  true  to  the 
Penates,  of  having  illustrated,  as  none  other  has, 
the  genius  loci,  under  disadvantages  which  would 
have  sunk  a  weaker  mind  and  corrupted  a  less 
manly  and  heroic  heart."  (January  14,  1859.) 

Some  months  previously  (October  30,  1858), 
Simms,  while  jotting  down  the  personal  memoranda 
which  were  cited  in  the  first  chapter  of  this  book, 
commented  as  follows  on  his  father's  advice  that  he 
should  remain  in  Mississippi :  — 

"Thirty  odd  years  have  passed,  and  I  can  now 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     239 

mournfully  say  the  old  man  was  right.  All  that  I 
have  [done]  has  been  poured  to  waste  in  Charleston, 
which  has  never  smiled  on  any  of  my  labors,  which 
has  steadily  ignored  my  claims,  which  has  dispar 
aged  me  to  the  last,  has  been  the  last  place  to  give 
me  its  adhesion,  to  which  I  owe  no  favor,  having 
never  received  an  office,  or  a  compliment,  or  a  dol 
lar  at  her  hands ;  and,  with  the  exception  of  some 
dozen  of  her  citizens,  who  have  been  kind  to  me, 
and  some  scores  of  her  young  men,  who  have  hon 
ored  me  with  a  loving  sympathy  and  something 
like  reverence,  which  has  always  treated  me  rather 
as  a  public  enemy,  to  be  sneered  at,  than  as  a  du 
tiful  son  doing  her  honor.  And  I,  too,  know  it 
as  a  place  of  tombs.  I  have  buried  six  dear  chil 
dren  within  its  soil !  Great  God !  what  is  the  sort 
of  slavery  which  brings  me  hither!  " 

It  was  not  a  morbid  temper  alone  that  inspired 
these  gloomy  words.  Simms  had  just  been  through 
trials  that  would  have  unnerved  any  man.  The 
year  1858  had  been  ushered  in  by  the  death  of  his 
father-in-law,  Mr.  Nash  Roach  (February  28),  and 
more  untimely  deaths  had  followed.  Mr.  Roach 
had  reached  the  age  of  sixty-six,  and  on  his  death 
Woodlands  had  passed  to  Simms  and  his  wife  for 
their  lives,  and  on  their  deaths  to  their  eldest  son, 
William  Gilmore.  But  Woodlands,  which  had 
been  especially  bright  to  Simms  ever  since  the 
birth  of  his  second  son,  Sydney  Roach,  in  Aug 
ust,  1852,  and  of  his  third  son,  Beverley  Hammond, 
in  August,  1854,  was  to  be  bright  no  longer.  The 


240  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

family  had  removed  as  usual  to  Charleston,  and 
Simms  had  gone  North  for  a  short  trip,  when  the 
yellow  fever  made  its  appearance  in  the  city.  "A 
terrible  prescience,"  as  he  afterwards  styled  it, 
hurried  the  father  home.  He  arrived  only  in  time 
to  find  his  two  favorite  sons  stricken  with  the  dis 
ease.  All  efforts  of  father,  mother,  and  devoted 
friends  like  William  Porcher  Miles,  who  gave  him 
self  up  to  nursing  them,  failed  to  save  them,  and 
they  died  on  the  same  day,  September  22,  1858. 

The  loss  of  these  boys  was  probably  the  greatest 
blow  that  Simms  had  ever  had.  Children  of  his 
maturer  years,  they  had  entered  like  sunshine  into 
his  clouded  and  chequered  life.  One  of  them  had 
combined  the  names  of  two  dear  friends  (Tucker 
and  Major  Hammond),  and  both  had  seemed  up  to 
this  time  the  embodiment  of  health  and  spirits. 
He  had  loved  all  his  children,  and,  besides  those 
mentioned  in  the  previous  chapter,  he  had  had  two 
born  to  him  within  the  past  two  years;  his  eldest 
daughter,  too,  had  just  married,  or  was  about  to 
marry,  her  cousin,  Mr.  Edward  Roach,  and  he 
might  look  forward  to  having  grandchildren  at  his 
knees ;  but  he  could  not  be  comforted,  and  in  poems 
and  letters  he  poured  forth  the  bitterness  of  his 
grief. 

In  such  a  state  of  mind  it  was  natural  for  him 
to  turn  for  relief  to  his  proper  and  congenial  occu 
pation  of  writing  romances.  He  took  up  the  un 
finished  "Cassique  of  Kiawah,"  and  by  the  spring 
of  1859  had  it  ready  for  the  printers.  Except  for 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     241 

the  touching  prefatory  sonnet  to  Miles,  no  traces 
are  to  be  found  in  it  of  the  effects  of  his  great  sor 
row  upon  his  mind  and  heart.  There  is  hardly  a 
sign  of  flagging  powers,  although  he  has  been  writ 
ing  romances  for  twenty-seven  years.  Sometimes, 
it  is  true,  he  proses  more  than  is  usual  with  him; 
but  when  he  wakes  up  from  his  doze  and  pushes 
off  on  the  trail  of  his  plot,  he  runs  like  an  old 
hound  who  is  anxious  to  show  that  he  is  still  wor 
thy  to  be  called  the  leader  of  the  pack.  In  short, 
although  the  revolutionary  romances  have  at  times 
a  greater  charm  for  the  reader  who  loves  the  wild, 
free  life  of  swamp  and  forest,  "The  Cassique  of 
Kiawah  "  maintains  an  average  standard  of  excel 
lence  which  makes  one  hesitate  before  determining 
that  it  is  inferior  to  any  of  Simms's  romances. 

Like  "The  Yemassee  "  it  is  a  colonial  story,  but 
of  a  still  earlier  period — 1684.  Unlike  "The 
Yemassee  "  it  does  not  confine  itself  to  the  woods, 
or  make  its  Indian  characters  prominent ;  but  gives 
an  admirable  description  of  the  infant  Charlestown 
and  of  life  on  a  gallant  privateer,  the  Happy-go- 
Lucky,  terrible  to  Spanish  galleons  and  dear  to 
colonial  dames  who  purchase  its  contraband  silks 
and  laces.  Its  author  is  nowhere  out  of  his  ele 
ment,  and  does  not,  as  in  so  many  of  his  other 
works,  allow  his  historical  knowledge  to  impede 
his  progress.  If  his  descriptions  of  events  at  sea 
display  no  special  familiarity  with  seamanship, 
they  are  nevertheless  spirited  and  full  of  action, 
not  mere  colorless  imitations  of  Cooper.  And  if 


242  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

the  fact  that  a  romance  of  six  hundred  pages  does 
not  seem  tedious  to  a  reader  who  has  already  gone 
through  twenty  odd  romances  by  the  same  author, 
be  a  sign  of  success,  then  Simms  certainly  suc 
ceeded  in  "The  Cassique  of  Kiawah." 

This  last  of  Simms's  worthy  romances  had  fallen 
upon  bad  times;  for  the  country  was  too  much 
stirred  up  over  the  great  questions  of  slavery  and 
secession  to  pay  much  attention  to  literature. 
Nevertheless  many  who  read  it  expressed  their  ad 
miration  in  the  warmest  terms.  Cooke  and  Hayne 
were  especially  pleased,  and  Professor  W.  J.  Riv 
ers,  perhaps  the  best  informed  man  in  Carolina  on 
matters  of  local  history,  wrote  to  bear  his  testimony 
to  the  accuracy  with  which  Simms  had  delineated 
the  historical  period  in  which  he  had  set  his  ro 
mance.  Stately  Charleston  bought  a  few  more 
copies  than  usual ;  and  even  the  "  North  American 
Review  "  made  some  amends  for  its  former  unpleas 
antness  by  giving  a  favorable  notice  of  the  book. 
Thus  encouraged,  the  veteran  shook  off  his  troubles 
and  his  ill  health  sufficiently  to  revise  and  enlarge 
his  "History  of  South  Carolina."  Scarcely  had 
he  finished  this  task,  before  his  nerves  were  again 
shattered  by  the  severe  illness  of  his  baby  daughter, 
Harriet  Middleton,  whose  beauty  had  been  the 
pride  of  the  family.  She  was  Miles's  god-daugh 
ter,  and  after  the  crisis  was  over  Simms  wrote  the 
former,  then  member  of  Congress  from  Charleston, 
a  pitiful  account  of  the  anguish  that  had  racked 
him  for  weeks  past.  After  her  recovery  he  was 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     243 

cheered  by  a  visit  from  his  old  friend  Lawson, 
and  perhaps  by  an  invitation,  got  for  him  by  Miles 
and  others  of  his  friends  in  Congress,  to  deliver  the 
oration  at  the  unveiling  of  Clark  Mills 's  equestrian 
statue  of  Washington.  It  was  undoubtedly  a  plea 
sure  to  be  requested  to  undertake  such  a  task ;  but 
Simms  wrote  back  dolefully  that  he  was  sick,  de 
spondent,  poor,  and  out  at  the  edges  generally.  So 
he  felt  obliged  to  decline,  and  the  Hon.  Mr.  Bocock, 
of  Virginia,  was  finally  chosen  to  fill  his  place. 
His  despondency  was  further  increased  by  the  ac 
cidental  burning  of  his  house  in  Charleston  early 
in  May,  1860.  Here  many  of  the  pleasantest 
months  of  his  life  had  been  spent  with  Hayne  and 
other  friends,  and  here  he  had  lost  his  two  boys. 
"You  will  feel  a  little  yourself,"  he  wrote  Miles, 
"for  a  wigwam,  in  which  you  have  seen  us  so  bit 
terly  tried."  Other  letters  followed,  telling  his 
friend  of  plantation  losses,  of  the  illness  of  another 
child,  of  the  rascalities  of  politicians,  and  of  the 
evil  of  things  in  general ;  but  he  was  not  enough, 
of  a  pessimist  to  avoid  an  expression  of  paternal 
pride  when  his  namesake  Gilmore  stood  "Num 
ber  One  "  at  the  Arsenal  Academy  of  Columbia. 

Meanwhile  his  revised  "History  of  South  Caro 
lina"  had  been  published,  and  he  went  to  New 
York  in  August,  1860,  to  superintend  the  printing 
of  his  last  ante-bellum  book,  his  enlarged  "Arey- 
tos,  or  Songs  of  the  South."  There  was,  of  course, 
no  need  for  the  volume,  —  youthful  love  songs  are 
hardly  the  kind  of  poetry  with  which  to  usher  in  a 


244  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

revolution,  —  but  Simms  took  an  almost  feverish 
delight  in  publishing,  and  if  he  ever  needed  plea 
sure,  he  needed  it  in  this  trying  year  of  1860.  To 
do  him  justice  it  must  be  said  that  he  expected  no 
praise  for  his  poems,  but  he  did  expect  great  things 
of  his  history,  and  he  was  much  disappointed  when 
he  found  that  scarcely  a  newspaper  in  South  Car 
olina  took  any  notice  of  it.  The  "North  Amer 
ican  Re  view  "gave  him  another  compliment;  but 
the  South  Carolinians  were  too  busy  applauding 
violent  secessionist  speeches  to  pay  any  attention  to 
their  own  history,  even  though  Simms  had  written 
his  book  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  furnishing  the 
young  men  of  the  State  with  an  ample  stock  of  ar 
guments  with  which  to  defend  the  cause  of  states- 
rights.  He  laid  great  stress  upon  this  last  point  in 
his  letters  to  Congressman  Miles;  but,  although 
he  is  certainly  more  outspoken  about  nullification 
than  he  was  in  his  first  edition,  it  is  hard  to  dis 
cover  why  he  should  have  thought  that  he  had  pre 
pared  a  manual  for  a  statesman,  when  he  had  only 
written  a  good  school  history  or  an  interesting 
sketch  for  a  general  reader.  It  is  true  that,  as 
President  C.  K.  Adams  of  Cornell  has  said,  "it 
shows  an  intense  local  patriotism,"  but  South  Car 
olina  politicians  hardly  needed  lessons  in  that  re 
gard  in  the  year  1860.  Still,  as  the  above  quoted 
authority  says,  the  book  "has  several  distinctive 
merits  above  all  other  histories  of  South  Carolina. 
It  covers  the  whole  period  down  to  our  civil  war. 
It  has  all  the  beauties  of  the  author's  character- 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     245 

istic  style.  .  .  .  From  beginning  to  end  the  nar 
ration  is  spirited  and  graphic,  but  the  sketch  is 
too  brief  for  details  even  on  the  most  important 
points."  This  is  high  praise,  and  it  is  in  the 
main  well  deserved.  One  can  only  wish  that 
Simms  could  have  seen  it  just  after  he  had  written 
one  of  his  lugubrious  letters  to  Miles  on  the  sub 
ject  of  his  people's  neglect  of  his  patriotic  book. 
For,  however  sectional  it  may  seem  nowadays, 
Simms  certainly  made  it  patriotic  in  his  sense  of 
the  term.  Yet  it  was  not  the  first  time  his  efforts 
for  South  Carolina  had  been  slighted  by  the  people 
for  whom  they  were  made,  and  after  a  short  stay  in 
New  York,  during  which  he  advised  his  friends, 
like  Lawspn,  to  unload  their  Southern  securities  as 
speedily  as  possible,  he  returned  to  Woodlands 
to  await,  with  what  patience  he  could  muster,  the 
breaking  out  of  the  war  he  had  long  foretold. 

But  as  we  began  with  nightmares  we  may  as  well 
end  with  them,  even  though  this  chapter  has  al 
ready  stretched  out  to  an  unconscionable  length; 
and  as  it  began  with  extracts  from  Simms's  corre 
spondence  with  Beverley  Tucker,  it  may  close  with 
similar  extracts  from  his  correspondence  with  his 
young  friend  Miles.  Before  these  interesting  let 
ters  are  examined,  however,  it  will  be  well  to  refer 
briefly  to  a  ridiculous  action  on  the  part  of  one  of 
those  useless  and  demoralizing  Southern  conven 
tions  which  were  stirring  up  strife  in  the  decade 
preceding  the  war. 

The  convention  held  in  December,  1856,  at  Sa- 


246  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

vannah  appointed  a  committee  to  prepare  a  "series 
of  books  in  every  department  of  study,  from  the 
earliest  primer  to  the  highest  grade  of  literature 
and  science."  The  books  were  to  be  free,  of  course, 
from  abolitionist  teachings,  and  were  to  show  the 
world  the  beauties  of  slavery  and  the  indefeasibil- 
ity  of  states-rights.  The  committee  appointed  to 
prepare  this  literature  —  and  there  are  some  good 
people  in  the  South  to-day  who  dream  of  manufac 
turing  a  similar  product  —  contained  some  excellent 
men  like  Bishop  Elliott,  of  Georgia,  and  Professor 
Bledsoe,  but,  strangely  enough,  the  only  represen 
tative  man  of  letters  the  South  could  boast  of  was 
omitted.  This  remarkable  action  was  noticed  in  a 
sarcastic  article  in  "Putnam's  Magazine  "  for  Feb 
ruary,  1857,  the  writer  inquiring  why  the  name  of 
William  Gilmore  Simms,  LL.  D.,  had  been  so  un 
ceremoniously  passed  over.  He  went  on  to  say: 
"In  respect,  however,  of  constructive  talent  and 
affluence  of  product,  Mr.  Simms  takes  precedence 
of  any  other  of  our  distinctive  Southern  authors. 
Mr.  Wirt  and  Mr.  Legare,  who  are  usually  quoted 
as  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  of  our  Southern  litera 
ture  [ex  pede  NON  Herculeni],  were  both  polished, 
and  graceful,  and  accomplished  essayists ;  but  they 
displayed  none  of  the  verve  or  continuity  of 
Simms." 

It  is  a  little  amusing  to  recall  at  this  point  the 
notion  Simms  had  latterly  taken  up  that  the  North 
ern  press  was  endeavoring  to  undermine  his  rep 
utation.  His  sturdiest  supporters  and  the  major- 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     247 

ity  of  his  readers  had  always  been  at  the  North,1 
and  it  was  not  until  he  began  to  meddle  in  politics 
that  he  ever  got  any  severer  criticism  there  than  a 
man  of  his  careless  literary  habits  might  have  ex 
pected.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the  encouragement 
which  the  North  gave  to  "Atalantis,"  "Martin 
Faber,"  "Guy  Rivers,"  and  "The  Yemassee,"  he 
might  have  gone  on  publishing  "Early  Lays,"  and 
other  such  volumes,  to  the  end  of  time  without  any 
body's  being  the  wiser  except  a  few  Southern  bibli 
ophiles.  If  he  had  not  visited  the  North  summer 
after  summer,  mingling  with  her  literary  men,  his 
work  would  have  been  far  more  provincial,  if  in 
deed  he  had  found  sufficient  incitement  to  keep 
working  at  all.  The  neglect  he  had  had  to  com 
plain  of  had  come  chiefly  from  the  South,  for  rea 
sons  which  have  already  been  given  at  length. 
This  recent  ignoring  of  his  claims  by  the  Southern 
convention,  while  really  an  unintended  compliment, 
was  but  of  a  piece  with  the  constant  slights  he  had 
received  from  his  own  people  for  thirty  odd  years. 
It  was  but  feeble  amends  for  this  treatment  that 
he  was  afterwards  made  a  member  of  the  Southern 
Board  of  Education  appointed  by  the  Knoxville 
Convention,  or  that  he  was  named  by  the  governor 
as  a  delegate  from  South  Carolina  to  the  Southern 
Commercial  Convention  which  met  at  Montgomery, 
Alabama,  in  May,  1858. 2 

1  Redfield  stated  this  to  General  J.  G.  Wilson,  with  regard  to 
the  revised  edition. 

2  This  action  of  the  Savannah  Convention  has  been  twisted  into 


248  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

In  his  correspondence  with  Tucker,  Simms  had 
deferred  to  the  former's  age,  and  had  allowed  him 
to  lead  the  discussions  they  kept  up  on  politics, 
but  in  the  case  of  his  young  friend  Miles  he  was 
disposed  to  be  leader  himself,  and  to  play  the  part 
of  adviser.  It  is  somewhat  amusing  in  view  of  his 
former  prophecies  to  find  him  writing  from  Wood 
lands,  February  3,  1859 :  — 

"Don't  touch  Cuba.  .  She  is  the  bait  which  the 
Democratic  party  holds  out  to  the  South.  Beware 
how  you  enter  this  field.  The  Democratic  party 
has  but  one  chance  left  for  life,  that  of  involving 
us  in  foreign  war.  It  is  a  mere  delusion  to  sup 
pose  that  our  chances  of  getting  Cuba  are  less,  if 
separate,  than  as  a  whole.  If  separate,,  we  control 
the  whole  commerce,  —  all  the  shipping  of  the 
North  I  It  is  better  to  be  separate  before  we  take 
Cuba.  Take  it  now,  and  we  have  a  burning 
brand  we  shall  never  extinguish.  It  is  the  only 
process  for  bolstering  up  the  Democratic  party, 
and  while  that  party  lives  the  South  can  never  be 
secure.  But  I  forget,  my  dear  Miles,  I  am  too 
spasmodic  now  for  a  politician.  I  have  hurts  and 
cares,  which  keep  me  from  thought.  Make  the 
most  you  can  of  this  scribble,  for  there  is  truth  in 
it.  I  see  a  thousand  miles  ahead  in  this  matter. 
God  bless  you.  Yours  ever,  SIMMS." 

a  joke  which  has  come  more  than  once  to  my  ears.  "Resolved," 
so  the  Convention  is  reported  as  voting,  ' '  That  there  be  a  South 
ern  literature.  Resolved,  That  William  Gilmore  Simms,  LL.  D., 
be  requested  to  write  this  literature."  This  humorous  perversion 
of  an  action  silly  enough  to  need  no  perversion  is  due  to  the  arti 
cle  in  Putnam's  quoted  above. 


DEEAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     249 

Writing  from  "Woodlands,  May  21,  he  says: 
"  My  own  opinion  is  that  the  people  of  all  the  South 
are  monstrously  ahead  of  all  their  politicians,  as 
the  latter  will  be  made  to  see  and  feel.  It  is  only 
the  trading  politicians  that  care  about  a  president 
at  all.  The  people  of  the  South  want  their  rights, 
not  office.  Those  who  want  office  scarcely  can  un 
derstand  them  [the  people].  Mark  me,  the  politi 
cian  now,  who  would  maintain  himself  long,  must 
endeavor  to  get  ahead  of  the  people,  not  to  arrest 
their  momentum,  but  to  direct  it  in  the  very  path 
they  are  pursuing.  .  .  .  We  in  the  South  at  this 
juncture  can  condense  all  our  political  creed  into 
one  brief  formula:  'We  know  but  the  South,  and 
the  South  in  danger ! '  And  no  more  tampering 
with  the  enemy ;  no  more  campaigns  bolstering  up 
a  driveling  [?]  party  to  the  ruin  of  the  South. 
Write  me.  I  need  it." 

At  the  end  of  the  same  year,  December  28, 
writing  of  ex -governor,  then  senator,  Hammond,  he 
says:  "He  is  friendly  to  Buchanan  and  will  sup 
port  him,  but  only  so  long  as  Buchanan  shall  prove 
superior  to  the  stupid  ambition  of  trying  to  win 
over  the  Northern  democracy  at  the  sacrifice  of 
everything.  In  brief,  Hammond  will  support  the 
Democratic  party  only  while  it  is  tributary  to  the 
interests  of  the  South."  In  the  same  letter  he 
gives  Miles  this  laconic  advice:  "Let  all  your 
game  lie  in  the  constant  recognition  and  assertion 
of  a  Southern  nationality."  On  February  8, 
1860,  he  gives  him  better  advice  when  he  tells  him 


250  WILLIAM  G1LMOEE  SIMMS. 

not  to  let  the  Southern  members  "mouth  and  splut 
ter," —  a  bit  of  counsel  which  should  have  been 
given  to  them  years  before,  as  the  pages  of  the 
"Congressional  Globe"  abundantly  prove.  Writ 
ing  March  21,  of  a  speech  recently  delivered  by 
Senator  Hunter,  he  remarks  that  it  is  "a  true, 
timid,  compromising  one,  though  well  written.  It 
will  not  do  for  the  time.  We  want  thunderbolts, 
not  gossamer,  for  the  combat.  This  of  course  is 
all  inter  nos" 

During  the  summer  of  1860  he  is  mainly  occu 
pied  in  speculating  about  the  presidential  election 
of  the  coming  autumn.1  He  thinks  Breckinridge's 
chances  good,  declaring  that  Douglas  will  not  get 
the  vote  of  a  single  Southern  State.  But  after  all 
he  does  not  attach  as  much  importance  to  the  elec 
tion  as  he  does  to  the  fact  that  the  cotton  States 
have  been  brought  "to  act  together,  independently, 
irrespectively  of  the  North," — that  the  conflict  has 
been  brought  to  the  only  issue  that  could  possibly 
come,  "a  purely  sectional  issue,"  from  which  only 
orte  result  can  arise,  a  struggle  for  independence  on 
the  part  of  the  South.  Apropos  of  this  consumma 
tion  he  writes,  July  15:  "I  had  a  long  and  ear 
nest  talk  with  Jamison,  begging  him  to  see  Bhett 
and  urge  strenuously  upon  him  what  I  should  say. 
I  told  him  that,  while  I  was  anxious,  like  himself, 
for  the  formation  of  a  Southern  confederacy,  I  saw 
clearly  that  such  a  declaration  would  drive  our 

1  He  approved  of  the  breaking  up  of  the  Charleston  Conven 
tion,  but  did  not  think  that  the  Southern  leaders  went  far  enough, 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.    251 

people  from  us,  —  at  this  time  the  fruit  is  not  ripe, 
—  but  that  we  should  really  retard  the  final  day 
of  deliverance."  He  then  goes  on  to  point  out  how 
hard  it  is  to  make  politicians  and  common  people 
conduct  a  campaign  on  abstract  principles,  and 
concludes  that  even  if  the  "Black  Kepublicans" 
win  this  time  it  will  be  better  for  the  South.  For 
the  successful  party  will  go  ahead  in  its  madness 
until  at  the  South  both  politicians  and  people  will 
feel  that  there  is  no  bearing  their  insolence  any 
longer,  and  all  will  move  toward  the  formation  of 
a  "Southern  confederacy."  Therefore  "it  is  to  be 
wished  that  Mr.  Rhett  could  take  no  active  part  in 
the  canvass,"  and  the  "Mercury"  will  do  well  "to 
forbear  as  much  as  possible  and  to  expend  its  thun 
der  rather  upon  Lincoln  than  Douglas."  In  this 
way  Lincoln  may  be  defeated,  and  if  not,  the  Re 
publican  party  will  become  still  more  odious,  and 
then  will  come  the  separation. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  shrewd  political  sense 
mixed  up  with  these  nightmares,  as  the  reader  has 
doubtless  perceived.  Simms  evidently  did  not  see 
clearly  how  far  the  people  of  the  South  had  been 
led  to  dread  the  success  of  the  Republicans,  but 
he  was  quick  enough  to  perceive  that  in  the  success 
of  that  party  he  and  his  friends  must  base  their 
hopes  for  the  speedy  separation  of  the  sections. 
Nor  was  he  at  all  inclined  to  mince  matters,  as  some 
honest  persons  were  then  and  have  been  since,  by 
proclaiming  that  the  South  was  merely  engaging 
in  a  struggle  for  her  constitutional  rights.  He  saw 


252  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

plainly  enough  that  people  do  not  fight  for  abstract 
principles,  and  that  if  constitutional  questions  came 
into  play  at  all,  it  would  only  be  in  a  secondary 
sense.  He  boldly  based  his  desire  for  separation 
on  the  hatred  existing  between  the  sections  and  on 
the  menace  which  the  preponderance  of  power  on 
the  part  of  the  North  gave  to  the  South' s  peculiar 
institution.  In  other  words,  he  saw  that  the  com 
ing  war  would  be  one  for  the  preservation  of  slav 
ery,  however  much  men  might  consciously  or  un 
consciously  disguise  the  fact.  He  had  echoed 
Tucker's  words:  "If  we  will  not  have  slaves,  we 
must  be  slaves,"  and  in  doing  so  he  showed  him 
self  to  be  a  clearer  thinker  than  the  conscientious 
but  befogged  theorists  around  him,  who  were  for 
ever  speaking  and  writing  as  if  the  constitutional 
theories  which  were  held  on  account  of  slavery 
were  more  potent  over  men's  minds  than  the  de 
stroying  institution  itself.  We  may  regret  that 
such  a  clear-headed  man  should  have  been  so  de 
luded  in  respect  to  the  true  nature  of  the  cause  for 
which  he  was  struggling,  but  it  is  as  well  to  re 
member  that  he  did  not  claim  to  be  fighting  for  one 
thing  when  he  was  really  fighting  for  another. 

And  so  when  Lincoln  was  elected  and  the  call 
came  for  a  convention  of  his  State,  Simms  was  not 
found  napping.  He  wrote  to  Miles  that  he  hoped 
they  would  carry  the  South  "through  what  the 
Germans  call  the  Landsturm."  "It  will  be  a  pop 
ular  rush,"  he  added,  "as  I  have  always  predicted, 
as  soon  as  the  national  party  should  have  perished ; 


DREAMS  AND  POLITICAL  NIGHTMARES.     253 

the  momentum  given  to  the  people  being  such  as  no 
popular  leader  or  politician  would  venture  to  head, 
or,  heading,1  which  would  be  sure  to  run  over  him." 
Then  he  goes  on  to  point  out  that  the  descend 
ants  of  Revolutionary  heroes  should  be  put  forward 
to  engage  the  popular  sympathy,  and  that  a  proper 
man  should  be  found  for  the  governorship,  which 
"  will  be  for  a  time  at  least  the  presidency  of  a  new 
republic."  He  proposes  a  bill  of  rights  for  the  con 
vention  to  draw  up,  and  wishes  Miles  to  consider 
whether  in  the  new  confederacy  the  States  should 
not  have  equal  representation  in  the  lower  house  as 
well  as  in  the  upper,  the  great  principle  of  safety 
being  the  protection  of  minorities  or  feeble  States. 
Not  content  with  these  suggestions,  he  sends  some 
patriotic  poems  for  insertion  in  the  "Mercury." 

Nor  does  he  forget  to  keep  his  Northern  friends 
like  Mr.  Bockie,  of  Brooklyn,  informed  on  the  state 
of  affairs  at  the  South.  On  November  20,  he 
writes  to  him  from  Woodlands:  "Never  was  a 
people  so  thoroughly  aroused  and  resolute  before. 
.  .  .  South  Carolina  will  secede  first,  Alabama 
and  Mississippi,  Georgia  and  Florida,  in  order  next, 
and  before  the  1st  of  February,  all  these  States  will 
be  out  of  the  Confederacy.2  South  Carolina  will 
be  out  before  Christmas.  Her  legislature  was 
unanimous,  and  every  member  of  the  convention 

1  Two  commas  have  been  inserted  to  make  the  meaning  plainer, 
but  the  construction  of  the  sentence  is  hopelessly  bad. 

2  That  is,  the   Union,  -which  -was  a  Confederacy  according  to 
Sinims. 


254  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

nominated  is  for  secession  unreservedly.  South 
Carolina  alone  can  bring  60,000  men  into  the  field, 
sixty  Palmetto  regiments;  and  we  have  already 
50,000  volunteers  from  other  States,  should  any 
attempt  be  made  at  coercion.  Such  an  attempt 
will  help  us  and  force  all  the  other  Southern  States 
to  take  their  places  by  our  side.  .  .  .  The  Union 
had  survived  its  uses,  had  got  to  be  a  mere  shop  [  ?] 
of  faction,  fraud,  and  peculation,  was  no  longer  a 
guardian  of  the  feeble,  was  a  bold,  impudent  ag 
gressor  upon  the  rights  of  others,  an  usurper,  wax 
ing  fat  and  kicking  in  its  lustihood,  and  needed  to 
be  taken  down  and  driven  to  short  commons." 1 

In  -a  word,  he  was  thoroughly  aroused.  Ill 
health  and  lassitude  seemed  to  have  left  him.  He 
waited  impatiently  for  the  passage  of  the  "Ordi 
nance  of  Secession,"  and  soon  after  singing  his 
"Nunc  Dimittis  "  wrote  Miles  a  brief  undated  epis 
tle  which  concluded  as  follows :  "  I  have  been  mak 
ing  stump  speeches.  Everybody  right  in  this  re 
gion.  Minute  men  in  arms.  Go  to  the  convention 
[at  Montgomery]  if  you  can.  Of  course,  Congress 
is  nothing  to  you  now.  Identify  yourself  with  the 
movement.  But  do  not  fatigue  yourself."  2 

1  Simms,  of  course,  had  his  constitutional  arguments,  but  sla 
very  was  the  chief  question  with  him.     Most  Southerners  then 
believed,   as  Dr.  Gildersleeve  has   since  expressed  it   (Atlantic 
Monthly,  January,  1892,  p.  87),  that  they  were  fighting  for  "  the 
cause  of  civil  liberty,  and  not  the  cause  of  human  slavery,"  — 
forgetting  that  it  was  human  slavery  which  largely  determined 
the  nature  of  a  Southerner's  ideas  of  civil  liberty. 

2  Alluding  to  Miles's  recent  illness. 


CHAPTEE  VII. 

THE  WAR. 

"I  AM  here,  like  a  bear  with  a  sore  head,  and 
chained  to  the  stake,"  wrote  Simms  to  Miles  on 
the  last  day  of  1860.  "I  chafe,  and  roar,  and  rage, 
but  can  do  nothing.  Do  not  be  rash,  but  do  not 
let  the  old  city  forget  her  prestige.  Charleston  is 
worth  all  New  England." 

But  if  he  could  not  be  up  in  arms,  he  could  do 
more  than  roar  and  curse  New  England.  He  could 
write  letters  by  the  dozen  to  Jamison  and  Miles, 
pointing  out  mistakes  that  had  been  made  by  those 
in  authority,  making  military  suggestions  of  all 
sorts,  and  showing  himself  dowered  with  a  large 
supply  of  common  sense  and  of  genius  for  affairs,  as 
well  as  with  the  poet's  "hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of 
scorn,  the  love  of  love."  Only  one  of  these  letters 
can  be  given  here,  but  all  should  some  day  be  pub 
lished. 

Sunday  l  Night,  12P.M. 

I  am  sleepless,  my  dear  Miles,  and  must  write. 
If  you  should  be  sleepless  also,  it  is  not  improbable 
but  that  my  letters  will  help  you  to  a  soporific  con- 

1  Probably  the  Sunday  that  followed  the  firing  on  the  Star  of 
the  West,  t.  e.  January  13,  1861. 


256  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

dition.  It  seems  to  me  that  you  will  have  a  little 
respite.  The  opening  fire  upon  the  Star  of  the 
West  changes  materially  the  aspect  of  things  to  the 
Federal  government,  and  they  will  hardly  think  to 
send  supplies  to  Sumter  except  under  cover  of 
armed  vessels,  which  is  the  inauguration  of  open 
war  upon  the  State,  which  the  President  and  cabinet 
will  hardly  attempt  unless  under  authority  of  Con 
gress.  Congress  alone,  I  believe,  has  the  power 
to  declare  war.  There  is  no  telling,  however,  what 
may  be  done  when  the  power  is  under  the  hands  of 
a  weak  administration,  counseled  and  governed,  in 
fact,  by  a  person  whose  whole  training  has  en 
dowed  [him]  with  military  ideas  as  paramount  to 
all. l  We  must,  of  course,  prepare  for  two  dangers, 
treachery  and  assault.  But  it  strikes  me  that  the 
unexpected  fire  of  Fort  Morris  will  compel  a 
pause  in  the  Federal  councils,  for  the  better  matur 
ing  of  plans,  and  some  respite  for  preparation  will 
be  allowed  you.  Not  an  hour  should  be  lost  in 
preparation.  To  have  numerous  guns,  to  bear 
equally  upon  an  assailing  squadron  and  Fort  Sum 
ter,  seems  to  be  the  necessity.  Looking  at  the  map, 
I  note  that  Mount  Pleasant  is  distant  from  Fort 
Sumter  some  two  miles,  while  I  estimate  Moultrie 
to  be  some  one  and  a  quarter.  A  battery  at 
Mount  Pleasant,  cutting  the  western  angle  of  Sulli 
van's  Island,  seems  to  be  in  direct  range  with  Sum- 

1  It  seems  plain  that  Simms  here  alludes  to  General  Winfield 
Scott.  Cass  had  had  a  military  training,  but  he  had  resigned 
from  the  Cabinet  when  the  above  was  written- 


THE  WAR.  257 

ter,  and  if  within  reach  of  heavy  cannon,  then  a 
battery  of  earth  at  this  point,  with  half  a  dozen 
thirty-two  pounders,  might  operate  successfully 
against  it,  at  all  events  compel  a  very  useful  diver 
sion  of  its  fires.  So  I  find  that  on  the  sandhills 
below  Fort  Johnson,  and  on  the  sandhills  at  the 
extreme  Western  verge  of  Fort  Morris,  batteries  of 
say  three  heavy  cannon  each  might  face  Fort  Sum- 
ter,  framed  of  logs  faced  with  iron  and  filled  in 
with  sand,  which  could  contribute  largely  to  its 
distraction,  if  not  its  injury.  On  these  sandhills, 
also,  you  possess  an  advantage  in  their  elevation, 
which  will  tend  to  reduce  the  superiority  of  Sumter 
in  height.  Two  or  three  batteries  along  these  hills 
and  at  these  points,  mere  bastions,  having  two  or 
three  guns  each  of  heavy  calibre,  could  be  thrown 
up  very  suddenly,  assuming,  as  I  do,  that  you  can 
command,  from  the  popular  patriotism,  any  amount 
of  slave  labor.  I  would  have  them  so  planted  as 
not  to  face  the  portholes  of  Sumter,  yet  be  able  to 
take  them  at  an  angle.  Shot  entering  a  porthole 
obliquely  would  be  more  mischievous,  perhaps, 
than  if  direct,  since  the  zigzag  course  they  would 
pursue  would  be  likely  to  kill  every  man  on  one  side 
or  other  of  the  guns,  besides  abrading  the  embra 
sure  very  seriously.  In  reference  to  Wappoo  Cut, 
let  me  mention  that,  as  the  obvious  entrance  to  that 
cut  is  by  the  Stono,  there  is  an  old  fort,  once 
thought  a  pretty  strong  one,  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Stono,  on  Cole's  Island.  This  might  be  manned 
by  volunteers  from  the  precinct,  officered  by  some 


258  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

good  military  man.  It  covers  Bird  Key  [?]  and 
is  very  well  placed,  though  still,  I  think,  it  would 
be  good  policy  to  stop  up  Wappoo  Cut,  or  keep  an 
armed  schooner  in  Ashley  River,  at  the  mouth  of 
it.  I  am  writing,  you  perceive,  without  the  slight 
est  knowledge  of  what  has  been  done;  and  it  is 
quite  probable  that  all  my  suggestions  have  been 
anticipated.  If,  however,  you  fancy  there  is  any 
thing  in  them,  communicate  with  Jamison  and  any 
military  friends  on  whose  judgment  you  rely. 
Ranging  timbers  properly  mortised  might  be  pre 
pared  by  the  mechanics  of  the  city,  and  the  iron 
bars  laid  on,  if  desired,  before  shipment  to  the  de 
sired  points.  It  is  my  impression  that  old  Fort 
Johnson  ranges  Moultrie  in  the  same  line  with 
Sumter.  If  so,  it  is  a  question  how  far  it  would 
be  proper  to  use  the  former  place  with  heavy  can 
non  which  might  range  across  the  strait.  You 
should  employ  all  the  heavy  cannon  you  can. 
Jamison  told  me  that  you  had  an  abundance. 
Unless  Fort  Morris  has  numerous  pieces,  she  could 
hardly  play  any  efficient  game  with  many  assailing 
vessels.  I  do  not  know  where  Fort  Morris  is 
placed,  but  suppose  it  to  be  fronting  equally  the 
Ship  and  the  Twelve-feet  channel.  In  that  event, 
unless  the  sandhills  interpose,  it  is  under  the  range 
of  Fort  Sumter,  provided  the  distance  be  within 
three  miles,  as  I  suppose  it  to  be.  I  should  have 
said  four,  but  for  the  threat  of  Anderson  to  fire 
on  Fort  Morris.  A  battery  between  Fort  Morris 
and  the  Lighthouse,  on  the  edge  of  the  sandhills, 


THE  WAR.  259 

might  rake  the  Ship  Channel  with  a  plunging  fire, 
yet  I  should  think  be  out  of  range  and  even  sight 
of  Fort  Sumter.  I  think  I  said,  in  a  previous 
letter,  that  in  sighting  the  guns  for  long  distances 
telescopes  should  be  used ;  of  course,  I  meant  only 
the  ordinary  ship  spyglasses,  of  which  a  sufficient 
number  for  each  battery  could  be  obtained  in  the 
city.  With  another  battery  to  second  Fort  Mor 
ris,  each  of  twelve  guns  at  least,  and  heavy  ones, 
you  could  give  a  telling  account  of  all  entering 
vessels.  They  might  all  be  sunk  with  good  gun 
nery.  But  two  shot  only  taking  effect  out  of 
eighteen  fired,  would  seem  to  show  that  the  gun 
nery  was  not  sufficiently  practiced.  I  write  only 
from  report.  To-night,  I  learn  that  (on  dif) 
there  has  been  a  mutiny  in  Fort  Sumter,  and  that 
Anderson  has  had  to  shoot  one  of  his  men,  and  put 
ten  more  in  irons ;  and  that  this  was  the  reason  why 
he  did  not  fire  on  Forts  Morris  and  Moultrie.  By 
the  "Mercury  "  it  is  said  that  some  negotiations  are 
on  foot  which  will  prevent  bloodshed.  The  infer 
ence  is  that  Fort  Sumter  will  be  given  up.  This  is 
hardly  probable.  I  suspect  treachery.  We  should 
suspect  nothing  else.  Anderson  wishes  communi 
cation  with  the  city.  If  opportunity  is  allowed 
him  to  see  what  we  are  doing,  or  to  hear  of  it,  or  if 
he  is  allowed  to  corrupt  mercenaries,  we  shall  have 
worse  mischief.  We  must  not  be  too  confiding, 
too  easy  of  faith,  too  courteous,  even  to  an  enemy, 
who,  if  he  had  the  right  feeling,  would  at  once 
resign  his  command  and  throw  up  his  position  on 


260  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

the  distinct  ground  of  his  Southern  birth  and  asso 
ciations.  He  should  be  kept  corked  up  closely, 
until  we  are  quite  ready  to  draw  him  off.  If  he 
still  keep  his  position,  and  we  are  to  have  an  at 
tempt  by  the  war  steamers,  Fort  Sumter  must  and 
will  take  part  in  it ;  the  vital  point  is  how  to  neu 
tralize  his  action  in  the  engagement.  I  see  but  the 
one  suggested,  to  keep  as  many  batteries  at  work 
on  him,  breaching  and  otherwise,  and  a  cloud  of 
vessels  and  men  ready  for  scaling,  as  will  effectively 
divert  his  regards  from  those  forts  which  are  de 
signed  for  the  defense  of  the  harbor.  And  unless 
Fort  Morris  be  made  strong  in  guns,  I  see  that 
vessels  of  heavy  draft  in  deep  water  may  shell  it 
ad  libitum,  while  the  smaller  craft  passes  in.  I  am 
very  doubtful  whether  a  fort  on  the  east  end  of 
Sullivan's  can  do  more  than  cover  the  Maffit  and 
Rattlesnake  channels,  if  these.  It  can  hardly  do 
much  mischief  to  vessels  entering  the  Ship  Channel. 
Something  will  depend  upon  the  calibre  of  its  guns. 
Do,  if  you  can  spare  a  half  hour,  write  me,  in  char 
ity,  how  we  stand,  and  with  what  degree  of  prep 
aration,  and  believe  me 

W.  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

To  this  long  letter  Simms  added  a  by  no  means 
short  postscript,  in  which  he  detailed  a  scheme  for 
approaching  Fort  Sumter  by  rafts  in  case  an  esca 
lade  should  be  attempted,  a  proceeding  which  he 
deprecated  upon  the  whole.  The  two  head  rafts 
were  to  be  covered  with  thick  plank  and  tin,  and 


THE  WAR.  261 

to  be  painted  dark.  They  would  thus  be  protected 
from  hand  grenades,  and  at  low  water  the  whole 
chain  of  rafts  would  form  an  almost  solid  bridge. 
But  the  main  point  was  to  wear  the  garrison  out. 
"So  long  as  we  can  effect  this,"  he  concludes, 
"and  keep  them  in  a  state  of  siege,  there  is  no 
discredit  to  the  State.  We  should  do  nothing 
rashly  now,  to  the  peril  of  our  brave  young  men, 
which  we  can  possibly  avoid.  But  you  will  think 
me  interminable.  Once  more,  good-night."  * 

1  Any  elaborate  comments  upon  this  letter,  or  upon  the  similar 
ones  that  succeeded  it,  would  be  out  of  place  on  the  part  of  a 
•writer  who  can  make  no  claim  to  special  knowledge  of  military 
matters.  Yet  it  would  be  unfair  to  Simms  not  to  point  out  how 
far  he  seems  to  have  anticipated  in  his  correspondence  the  plan 
of  operations  subsequently  pursued  by  the  State  and  Confederate 
authorities  in  reference  to  the  defenses  of  Charleston  harbor. 
The  floating  battery  which  operated  against  Sumter,  and  which 
Beauregard  commended  to  the  Confederate  Secretary  of  War 
(The  War  of  the  Rebellion,  etc.,  Series  I.  vol.  i.  p.  316),  was  one 
of  Simms's  earliest  suggestions.  The  battery  proposed  at  Fort 
Johnson  was  erected,  and  a  second  added  ;  a  ten-inch  mortar  was 
also  used  at  Mount  Pleasant.  The  iron-clad  battery  at  Cum- 
mings  Point,  on  the  extremity  of  Morris  Island,  looking  toward 
Sumter,  which  was  the  chief  subject  of  many  of  his  letters,  was 
erected  almost  entirely  in  accordance  with  bis  plans,  as  is  evident 
from  a  comparison  of  his  letters  with  those  which  Major  Ander 
son  was  sending  at  the  time  to  the  authorities  at  Washington. 
This  battery  worked  well,  but  the  credit  of  its  conception  has 
been  wrongly  assigned.  The  Charleston  Year  Book  for  1883  (p. 
549)  states  that  "  the  first  thought  of  the  modern  iron  armor  now 
in  use  originated  in  Charleston,  with  the  late  Col.  C.  H.  Stevens, 
Twenty-fourth  South  Carolina  Volunteers,  who,  as  a  private  citi 
zen,  in  January,  1861,  began  the  erection  of  an  iron-armored  bat 
tery  of  two  guns,  on  Morris  Island,  built  with  heavy  yellow  pine 
timber  of  great  solidity,  at  an  angle  of  40°,  and  faced  with  bars  qf 


262  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

On  February  20,  besides  his  remarks  on  a  copy 
right  law,  —  a  subject  which  had  been  discussed  by 
him  in  the  "Southern  Literary  Messenger  "  several 
years  before,  —  he  referred  as  follows  to  the  ques 
tion  of  restricting  the  slave-trade :  "  We  ought  to 
frame  no  organic  law  touching  the  slave-trade. 
We  may  express  a  sentiment,  if  you  please;  but 
no  law.  Either  negro  slavery  is  a  beneficent,  mer 
ciful,  God-chartered  institution,  or  it  is  not.  If 
beneficent,  why  limit  it  ?  Is  it  better  for  the  negro 
to  be  a  barbarian  and  savage  in  his  own  country, 
than  to  work  out  his  deliverance  [sic]  in  this  ?  If 
better,  why  be  at  the  pains  to  cast  censure  on  the 
morale  of  the  institution  ?  Regulate  the  trade,  but 
do  not  abolish." 

In  the  same  letter  he  asks  why  the  three-fifths 
rule  in  regard  to  the  representation  of  slaves  should 
be  adopted,  —  "a  rule  forced  upon  us  by  a  people 
about  to  abandon  slavery,  and,  in  surrendering  to 

railroad  iron."  The  attempt  to  find  in  this  experiment  the  germ 
of  the  modern  iron-clad  is,  of  course,  idle,  as  armor-plated  vessels 
were  constructed  by  the  French  in  the  Crimean  War.  It  would 
seem  to  be  equally  erroneous  to  assign  the  conception  of  the  idea 
of  the  iron-clad  battery  to  Colonel  Stevens.  The  battery  was  not 
begun  until  the  last  days  of  January,  and  it  was  on  February  5 
that  Major  Anderson  discovered  that  it  was  being  covered  with 
railway  bars.  But  at  least  a  month  before,  Simms  had  detailed 
the  whole  plan  of  such  a  battery  to  Jamison,  then  acting  as  Secre 
tary  of  War  to  the  State  of  South  Carolina.  Jamison  spoke  of 
the  plan  to  military  men,  and  perhaps  Colonel  Stevens  deserves  the 
credit  of  having  first  determined  to  act  upon  it.  The  subject  can 
not  be  pursued,  but  it  is  at  least  apparent  that  Simms's  long  let 
ters  were  not  without  influence,  and  that  he  was  no  mere  dabbler 
in  matters  outside  his  sphere. 


THE  WAS.  263 

which,  we  gave  them  the  power  to  conquer  us," — • 
except  to  conciliate  border  States  like  Maryland 
and  Missouri,  which  will  soon  hold  the  relation 
toward  the  cotton  States,  if  the  latter  induce  them 
to  enter  the  new  confederacy,  which  the  North 
formerly  held  towards  the  South.  He  thinks  the 
border  States  will  only  weaken  the  new  govern 
ment,  that  they  had  better  form  a  middle  confed 
eracy,  which  they  must  do  if  they  do  not  join  the 
cotton  States.  "Count  the  votes  for  yourself," 
he  concludes,  "and  see  where,  in  a  few  years, 
the  cotton  States  would  be  with  such  an  arrange 
ment.  On  one  hand,  Virginia,  Maryland,  Ken 
tucky,  Tennessee,  North  Carolina,  and  Missouri, 
versus  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama 
[Mississippi],  Arkansas,  Louisiana,  and  Texas. 
Verb.  sap.  I  am  sleepy.  It  is  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning." 

He  must  have  been  very  sleepy  if  he  could  have 
gone  to  bed  without  reflecting  what  a  commentary 
his  own  predictions  were  upon  his  beloved  doctrine 
of  secession.  Why  three  groups  of  States,  rather 
than  four,  fire,  or  any  number?  Why  not  single 
cotton  States  after  a  while,  rather  than  a  group  of 
them?  And  why,  if  Cotton  was  king  and  slavery 
a  divinely  appointed  institution,  should  eight  States 
fail  to  manage  six  ?  But  he  evidently  did  not  think 
the  matter  out,  for  two  days  later  he  wrote  to  em 
phasize  his  views,  declaring :  "  If  we  move  steadily 
forward,  they  [the  border  States]  cannot  help  them 
selves,  and  must  come  into  our  fold  and  on  our 


264  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

own  terms.  We  should  make  no  organic  law,  and 
pass  no  provision  under  it,  having  their  case  in 
contemplation  at  all.  I  would  rather  have  a  com 
pact  empire  than  a  very  extensive  one,  and  our 
future  secret  of  safety  and  success  must  depend 
wholly  upon  the  homogeneity  of  or.r  society  and  in 
stitutions.  Were  the  territory  occupied  by  the 
border  States  an  inland  sea,  a  waste  of  waters,  it 
would  please  me  better."  Had  this  last  wish  been 
realized,  he  would  not  have  had  his  present  biogra 
pher  pointing  out  that  in  the  above  sentences  there 
is  no  mention  of  a  union  of  States  holding  certain 
views  of  the  Constitution,  but  that  there  is  a  pretty 
plain  mention  of  States  forming  a  union  to  perpetu 
ate  slavery.  But  to  continue  our  extracts.  Why, 
he  asks,  should  we  "conciliate  States  into  our  alli 
ance  whom  we  shall  have  to  support  just  as  we  have 
supported  [sic]  New  England-?  "  Still  they  may 
be  of  use  after  all  in  making  "an  imposing  front 
which  might  discourage  the  hostility  of  the  North." 
And  yet  he  fears  that  the  cotton  States  will  in  the 
future  be  much  more  troubled  with  the  question, 
"Who  shall  we  keep  out?"  rather  than  with  the 
question,  "How  many  will  come  in?"  For  "in 
process  of  time  all  Mexico  is  destined  to  be  civi 
lized  [sic]  through  the  medium  of  negro  slavery." 
He  further  fears  that  it  will  be  difficult  to  keep 
New  Jersey  and  the  other  Middle  States  out  of  his 
new  confederacy,  and  he  prophesies  that  in  three 
years  Calif ornia  will  " set  up  for  herself."  Let  us, 
then,  "not  bother  our  heads  to  please  England  and 


THE  WAR.  265 

the  North  on  the  score  of  negro  slavery  and  the 
slave-trade.  They  have  already  voted  us  barba 
rians.  But  we  have  them  in  our  power."  It  seems 
a  little  like  the  irony  of  fate  that  this  letter  should 
have  been  written  on  Washington's  birthday. 

In  his  next  letters  he  urges  for  low  taxes  on  im 
ports,  describes  how  he  is  adapting  the  sword  bay 
onet  to  the  old  musket,  and  refers  as  follows  to 
his  battery:  "I  find  that  Jamison  has  adopted  my 
suggestion  of  using  ranging  timbers  with  facings  of 
railroad  iron  for  batteries;  but  I  am  not  satisfied 
with  the  shape  of  the  battery,  nor  with  the  man 
ner  in  which  the  iron  is  laid  on.  ...  It  presents 
too  long  a  plane  surface  to  a  plunging  fire.  Be 
sides,  the  rails  are  not  spiked  down.  I  counseled 
that  they  should  be  spiked,  but  loosely,  so  as  to  al 
low  some  working  of  the  rail  under  the  shock  of 
shot  or  shell."  And  so  he  went  on,  giving  minute 
details,  illustrating  his  points  by  diagrams,  and 
showing  at  every  word  how  all  his  faculties  were 
aroused  for  the  defense  of  the  cause  he  had  labored 
for  so  long.  On  April  17,  he  wrote  again  about  his 
batteries,  concluding  with  these  pathetic  words: 
"To-day,  my  dear  Miles,  I  am  fifty -five!  But  my 
gray  beard  is  sixty -five.  I  have  grown  very  old  in 
two  years." 

He  had  been  through  enough  to  make  him  grow 
gray,  and  just  two  weeks  before  the  letter  last 
mentioned  was  written  he  had  had  fresh  proof  of 
how  hard  it  was  for  him  to  gain  any  credit  for  his 
labors.  Certainly  one  would  think  that  at  such  a 


266  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

time  patriotic  services  would  have  been  recognized, 
and  that  men  would  have  been  glad  to  give  credit 
to  one  another  for  any  exertion,  however  small,  in 
behalf  of  the  common  cause.  And  yet  we  find 
Simms  adding  a  postscript  to  his  letter  to  Miles  of 
April  2,  which  runs  as  follows :  — 

"I  suppose  you  have  seen  how  quietly  all  my 
agency  in  the  suggestion  of  the  battery  of  rail  iron 
and  ranging  timber  has  been  ignored.  In  my  let 
ters  to  you  and  to  Jamison,  —  and  the  letters  to  you 
were  all  transferred  to  him,  —  I  planned  batteries 
for  land  and  water,  went  into  details,  showed  all  the 
advantages,  showed  how  the  structure  should  be 
made  casemate,  bomb-proof,  how  the  plane  should 
be  inclined  to  the  rear,  how  the  '  rat  trap '  in  the 
rear  might  be  made  to  improve  upon  everything 
hitherto  used.  In  your  letters  to  me  you  pro 
fessed  to  know  nothing  of  these  things,  and  to  have 
no  such  intimacy  with  military  men  as  to  justify 
you  in  approaching  them  on  the  subject.  In  Jami 
son's  letters,  he  spoke  of  the  great  difficulty  which 
he  had  in  persuading  military  men  to  consider  the 
subject;  all  seemed  to  doubt  and  to  distrust  every 
thing  which  was  novel,  and  from  the  hands  of  a 
civilian.  But  gradually,  as  public  opinion  abroad 
began  to  speak  of  the  conception  as  working  a  rev 
olution  in  such  structures,  I  find  the  battery  a  sub 
ject  of  great  attention,  and  all  my  poor  agency  in 
it  ignored  wholly.  And  yet  my  plans  and  sugges 
tions  covered  this  and  the  floating  battery,  and 
covered  other  schemes  for  temporary  structures,  by 


THE  WAR.  267 

which  I  proposed  a  covered  approach  to  the  walls 
of  Sumter,  which  should  be  as  secure  against  hand 
grenades  as  against  cannon  —  Well !  it  is  not 
much  —  More : l  If  there  was  any  strategic  device 
for  the  relief  of  Fort  Sumter,  I  argued  and  antici 
pated  it  in  my  letters  to  Jamison  written  almost 
nightly  for  months  !  Enough  !  Yet  one  feels  a 
little  sore  that  there  should  be  no  record  of  a 
patriotism  and  a  devotion  to  his  country,  which  has 
left  him  little  time  or  thought  for  anything  else. 
Ever  since  the  moment  of  secession,  and  for  years 
before,  in  my  labors  of  political  literature,  I  had 
the  same  fate." 

Poor  old  man !  —  but  his  friend  Miles  at  least 
stuck  by  him  and  declared  that  to  Simms  more  than 
to  any  one  else  were  due  the  preparations  made  in 
Charleston  for  the  reduction  of  Sumter.  And 
while  displaying  this  intense,  but  to  us  misguided 
patriotism,  the  zealous  partisan  was  striving  to  in 
form  himself  of  all  that  was  being  written  against 
his  favorite  doctrine  of  the  right  of  secession.  In 
the  letter  to  which  the  above  postscript  was  added 
he  had  written :  "  I  could  wish  to  get  every  publi 
cation  which  in  any  degree  related  to  the  secession 
movement.  I  wish  to  fortify  myself  in  regard  to 
the  controversy,  as  well  from  the  opposite  stand 
point  as  from  our  own."  The  results  of  his  stud 
ies  were  seen  in  editorial  after  editorial  in  the 

1  The  effects  of  his  excitement  are  to  be  seen  in  the  style  of 
Simms's  letters  at  this  time.  His  ellipses  are  often  confusing,  aa 
in  the  above  sentence. 


268  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

"Mercury."  For  no  ignoring  of  his  labors  could 
prevent  him  from  giving  up  his  heart  and  soul  to 
the  cause  of  his  State,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  he  did 
not  even  stop  writing  about  his  batteries. 

The  war  was  now  fairly  begun,  and,  if  his  corre 
spondence  did  not  naturally  decrease,  it  is  at  least 
certain  that  few  of  his  letters  for  the  next  four 
years  have  been  preserved.  From  such  as  have 
come  to  light  we  see  that  he  was  in  a  constant  state 
of  anxiety  both  for  his  country  and  for  his  family. 
There  was  no  chance  now  for  summer  trips,  and 
..although  in  August,  1861,  he  wrote  to  his  friend 
Dr.  Porcher  that  the  country  about  Woodlands 
was  perfectly  healthy,  there  being  only  one  case  of 
fever  to  seventy  negroes,  we  are  inclined  to  doubt 
his  statement  when  we  find  him  in  the  same  year 
losing  two  of  his  children  from  fever  of  a  malig 
nant  type.  One  of  these  victims  was  his  fifth  son, 
Sydney  Hammond,  aged  two  years,  the  other  was 
Miles 's  god-daughter  Harriet,  aged  nearly  four. 

But  though  mistaken  as  to  the  healthfulness  of 
Woodlands,  he  knew  the  place  well  in  other  re 
spects.  Dr.  Porcher  had  just  published  an  essay 
on  the  plants  of  South  Carolina  and  their  use  in 
time  of  war.  Here  he  touched  a  hobby  of  Simms's, 
and  the  latter  wrote  him  long  letters  full  of  sug 
gestions.  Sojourns  among  the  Indians  and  back 
woodsmen  had  enabled  our  versatile  author  to  pick 
up  much  botanical  knowledge  and  many  curious 
recipes  for  the  compounding  of  medicines  and  of 
other  useful  articles.  Soap,  cartridge  boxes,  ink, 


THE  WAR.  269 

bonnets,  and  peanut  chocolate,  are  among  the 
things  that  can  be  made  easily,  the  last-named 
concoction  being  a  very  good  substitute  for  coffee, 
as  Porcher  can  learn  for  himself  if  he  will  run  up 
to  Woodlands,  where  there  is  no  scarcity  as  yet  of 
"hog  and  hominy"  (April  14,  1863). 

If  Porcher  had  made  the  visit,  he  would  not 
have  found  the  Woodlands  at  which  Simms  had 
passed  so  many  years  of  pleasure  and  of  pain.  The 
old  house,  with  its  broad  piazza,  and  the  study  where 
so  many  romances  had  been  written,  was  no  more. 
For  about  the  first  of  April,  1862,  the  main  house 
took  fire  from  some  unknown  cause  and  burned  to 
the  ground ;  and  if  its  owner  had  not  some  months 
previously  built  a  wing  to  accommodate  his  over 
flowing  library,  the  family  would  have  had  no  shel 
ter  save  an  outhouse  or  two. 

Simms  had  driven  with  General  Jamison  to  Mid 
way,  to  learn  what  was  happening  at  the  seat  of 
war.  They  got  back  about  one  o'clock  at  night, 
and  Jamison  drove  away  home,  while  Simms  went 
quietly  to  bed,  little  dreaming  that  in  three  hours 
he  would  have  to  flee  for  his  life.  Beginning  in 
the  attic,  the  fire  made  such  headway  that  when  it 
was  discovered  at  four  in  the  morning,  there  was 
no  chance  to  save  the  house.  The  slaves,  however, 
worked  with  a  will,  and  in  response  to  Mrs. 
Simms's  urgent  cries,  "Boys,  save  my  husband's 
library,"  the  fire  was  prevented  from  spreading  to 
the  wing.  The  resulting  desolation  can  be  best 
comprehended  from  the  following  letter  to  Miles :  — • 


270  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

WOODLANDS  in  Ruins,  April  10. 

Thanks,  dear  friend,  for  your  kind  letter.  It  is 
the  most  perfect  solace  I  have,  to  find  gathering  to 
me  at  this  juncture  troops  of  friends.  Your  words 
are  most  precious  among  them.  You  have  been 
beside  me  in  previous  and,  I  think,  worse  trials. 
Gladly  now  would  I  give  my  dwelling  and  all  that 
I  have  saved,  for  the  restoration  of  my  two  boys. 
And  since  then,  a  third  boy,  and  a  girl,  your  own 
protege,  and,  I  think,  one  of  the  most  promising 
and  lovely  of  my  children.  Truly,  I  am  pursued 
by  a  hungry  fate !  But  I  will  not  succumb.  It 
may  crush,  but  shall  not  subject  me,  no  [sic]  more 
than  Yankeedom  shall  subject  our  country.  I  am 
nappy  to  tell  you  that  I  have  saved  all  my  manu 
scripts,  and  nearly  all  my  library.  I  fortunately 
built,  only  the  last  year,  a  wing  to  the  dwelling, 
connected  by  a  corridor,  twenty  feet  in  length. 
The  wing  was  saved.  But  for  this  removal  of  my 
books,  they  must  have  been  all  lost.  And  only  a 
few  days  before  the  fire,  I  gathered  up  all  my  man 
uscripts  —  matter  enough  for  fifty  volumes,  —  and 
packed  it  into  trunks,  not  knowing  how  soon  I 
should  have  to  fly,  —  thinking  more  of  the  Yan 
kees  than  of  midnight  fires,  and  wishing  to  be 
ready.  Had  I  lost  my  library  and  manuscripts 
the  blow  would  have  been  insupportable.  As  it  is, 
I  mean  to  die  with  harness  on  my  back. 

My  family  is  occupying  my  library  and  two  out 
houses.  I  write  you  this  letter  from  a  corner  of 
my  carriage  house.  I  am  building  two  rooms  in  a 


THE  WAR.  271 

board  house,  which  will  afford  me  tolerable  shelter 
from  the  summer,  and  if  the  insurance  company 
will  pay,  as  I  am  promised,  seventy-five  in  the 
hundred,  I  shall  get  enough,  with  my  own  bricklay 
ers  and  workmen,  to  rebuild  the  walls  and  roof  of 
my  old  mansion.  But  to  restore  is  impossible. 
My  loss  in  money  is  about  $10,000.  I  have  lost 
the  best  part  of  my  furniture,  —  every  bedstead 
but  one,  —  half  of  my  bedding,  bed  and  other 
clothes,  drawers,  wardrobes,  crockery,  medicine 
case,  and  pictures,  statuettes,  candelabra,  orna 
ments,  and  a  thousand  toys,  ornaments,  mementos, 
such  as  can  never  be  replaced,  —  the  accumulations 
of  two  or  three  families,  for  five  generations.  All 
the  stores  in  my  pantry  were  destroyed.  Luckily 
my  meat  house  and  other  outhouses  were  saved. 
My  negroes  worked  zealously  and  with  a  loving 
devotedness,  which  was  quite  grateful  to  me.  I  had 
them  on  the  roofs  of  corridor,  library,  and  kitchen ; 
narrowly  escaped  myself  by  a  ladder  from  an  upper 
window,  while  the  floors  overhead  were  falling  in. 
I  do  not  despair,  do  not  despond,  but  verily  it 
tasks  all  my  courage  and  strength  to  endure  such 
repeated  strokes  of  fortune.  .  .  . 

So  far  he  writes  of  himself ;  the  rest  of  the  letter 
is  occupied  with  complaints  of  the  neglect  of  his 
counsels  by  the  authorities  and  with  new  counsels 
as  sure  to  be  disregarded.  He  asks  "why  artil 
lerists  should  not  be  armed  with  pikes,  instead  of 
with  short  swords  which  are  of  no  use  : "  since 


272  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

"pikes  in  the  hands  of  artillerists  could  protect  a 
battery  against  any  dash  of  cavalry."  "The  art 
of  war,"  he  continues,  "is  no  more  perfect  than 
any  other  art,  and  is  susceptible  of  a  thousand  im 
provements,  which  are  not  to  be  expected  from  the 
mere  soldiers  of  drill  and  routine." 

But  if  his  counsels  were  disregarded  by  "drill 
and  routine  "  officials,  his  losses  were  not  forgotten 
by  his  friends,  some  of  whom  raised  a  subscription 
of  three  thousand  dollars  to  help  him  to  rebuild. 
He  also  tried  to  make  a  little  money  by  his  pen, 
which  had  of  late  been  idle,  for  he  sent  the  pro 
prietors  of  the  "Southern  Illustrated  News"  — 
Richmond  gentlemen  who  were  rash  enough  to 
promise  their  subscribers  original  contributions 
by  Dickens  and  Thackeray  —  certain  poetical 
"Sketches  in  Greece,"  which  he  had  had  by  him 
for  six  years,  as  well  as  a  serial  entitled  "Paddy 
McGann,  or  The  Demon  of  the  Stump,"  —  a  tale  of 
a  humorous  Irishman  who  fancies  himself  haunted 
by  a  demon,  but  who  is  really  worried  out  of  his 
life  by  a  shrewish  spouse.  Simms  was  writing 
this  story  at  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Fredericks- 
burg,  December  13,  1862,  and  the  following  sen 
tences,  taken  from  the  first  chapter,  give  a  vivid 
picture  of  the  hopes  which  the  victory  raised :  — 

"Even  as  I  write  the  thunder  rolls  westward 
from  the  east.  There  is  storm  along  the  heights 
of  Virginia.  The  cry  is  havoc ;  the  war-dogs  are 
again  unleashed!  The  tempest  rages,  and  the 
bloody  banner  of  the  foe  goes  down  in  its  own 


THE  WAR.  273 

blood.  We  are  victors,  and  this  time  the  route 1 
is  complete.  Thirty  thousand  [sic]  of  the  insolent 
invaders  bite  the  dust.  Our  triumph  is  secure, 
our  independence  !  and  Peace,  with  her  beautiful 
rainbow,  plucked  from  the  bosom  of  the  storm, 
and  spread  from  east  to  west,  from  north  to  south, 
over  all  the  sunny  plains  and  snowy  heights  of  our 
beloved  Apalachia,  sends  our  gallant  sons  back 
once  more  to  the  calm  blessings  of  each  hospitable 
home."  And  the  fierceness  of  his  exultation  is 
explained  when  we  read  on:  "It  is  not  all  over, 
our  happy  life,  my  friend  !  We  shall  enjoy  the 
old  sports  of  our  sweet  little  river  once  more,  in 
communion  with  our  noble-hearted  companions.  It 
cannot  be  that  God  will  deliver  us  into  the  hands  of 
these  atrocious  heathens.  As  between  us  and  the 
Deity,  there  is  no  doubt  a  sad  reckoning  to  make; 
but  as  between  us  and  these  accursed  Yankees,  no 
reproach  lies  at  our  doors,  unless  that  single  one  of 
having  too  long  slept  within  the  coil  of  the  serpent. 
I  have  faith  in  God,  my  friend.  He  may  punish 
us,  and  we  must  suffer,  for  this  is  the  meed  of  our 
desert;  but  he  will  not  let  us  sink.  I  have  faith 
in  his  promise,  in  his  mercy,  and  I  know  that 
after  this  tribulation,  our  peace  shall  return  once 
more,  our  prosperity,  our  friends  ;  and  the  'song 
of  the  turtle  shall  be  heard  in  the  land. ' ' 

It  is  pathetic  to  read  these  heartfelt  utterances, 

1  One  of  the  numerous  typographical  errors  of  which  Southern 
authors  were  constantly  complaining.  It  is  hardly  probable  that 
Sinims  intended  to  use  the  obsolete  spelling. 


274  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

committed  with  such  conviction  of  righteous  inten 
tion  to  the  worn  type  and  wretched  paper  familiar 
to  all  who  have  interested  themselves  in  Confeder 
ate  literature.  Those  men  of  the  old  South  felt 
that  their  existence  as  a  primitive  people  was  at 
stake ;  they  felt  that  the  easy,  picturesque  life  they 
led  depended  for  its  perpetuation  upon  their  good 
swords,  and  they  fought  as  the  soldiers  of  Charles 
fought  the  Saracens  at  Tours,  or  as  Goth  and  Ro 
man  fought  Attila  and  his  Huns  at  Chalons.  In 
their  patriotic  songs  they  spoke  of  the  Northern 
troops  as  Huns  and  Vandals;  for  they  knew  too 
well  that  a  Northern  conquest  meant  the  destruc 
tion  of  their  peculiar  civilization.  But  they  did 
not  and  they  could  not  realize  that  the  parallel  be 
tween  themselves  and  the  soldiers  of  Aetius  was 
apparent  only.  They  did  not  and  they  could  not 
realize  that  they  were  fighting,  not  for  the  true  re 
ligion  and  the  higher  civilization,  but  for  the  per 
petuation  of  a  barbarous  institution  and  of  anarchy 
disguised.1  And  yet  who  that  sees  their  mistake 
to-day  would  be  so  rash  as  to  declare  that  if  he  had 
lived  in  their  times  and  in  their  environment,  he 
would  have  acted  differently  ?  And  who  shall  deny 
that  they  were  brave  men,  pouring  out  their  blood 
for  a  cause  which  to  them  was  true  and  holy  and 
blessed  of  God  himself?  It  is  idle  to  deny  their 
bravery,  although  that,  like  most  of  their  qualities, 

1  It  is  meant,  of  course,  that  this  would  have  been  the  result  of 
their  victory  —  not  that  they  consciously  fought  for  any  such  re« 
suit.  . 


THE  WAE.  275 

was  a  "survival,"  and  it  is  equally  idle  to  affirm 
that  a  whole  people  can  astonish  a  world  by  their 
heroism  in  defense  of  a  cause  in  which  they  do  not 
believe. 

To  return,  however,  to  our  wrought-up  romancer. 
"Paddy  McGann"  lies  in  the  dingy  pages  of  the 
pretentious  Richmond  weekly,  and  no  one  will  ever 
endeavor  to  resurrect  it.  There  is  no  need  to  do 
so,  unless  one  wishes  to  get  a  pleasant  description 
of  the  Edisto, — the  "sweet  little  river"  of  the 
above  extracts,  —  and  of  the  easy-going  life  which 
Simms  and  Jamison  and  their  neighbors  lived  on 
its  banks.  But  all  these  good  men  are  gathered  to 
their  fathers,  and  few  will  care  to  know  how  Jami 
son  excelled  any  man  in  the  State  in  making  a 
cocktail,  and  Simms  in  making  a  punch.  The  old 
life  is  gone,  and  as  Simms  felt  it  going  his  outcries 
against  the  devastating  "Northern  hordes"  became 
shriller  and  shriller.  As  one  reads  some  of  the 
poems  he  was  in  the  habit  of  dashing  off,  as  the 
newspapers  brought  an  account  of  a  new  battle,  one 
can  fancy  that  one  is  listening  to  the  wail  of  a  Ro 
manized  Briton  telling  of  the  cruel  deeds  he  has 
seen  perpetrated  by  the  yellow-haired  barbarians 
from  over  sea. 

However  exaggerated  these  poems  might  be,  they 
came  from  his  heart,  and  were  all  that  he  could 
write.  His  drama  on  "Benedict  Arnold,"  which 
he  published  in  the  "Magnolia,"  another  Rich 
mond  weekly,  bored  him  greatly,  as  he  confessed 
to  Hayne.  "My  heart,"  he  continued,  "is  too 


27G  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

full  of  anxiety  to  suffer  me  to  write,  and  though  I 
have  a  contract  for  some  two  hundred  dollars' 
worth  of  prose,  I  find  myself  unable  to  divert  my 
thoughts  from  the  crisis  in  which  the  country  trem 
bles  in  suspense.  What  I  write  is  in  a  spasm,  a 
single  burst  of  passion,  —  hope,  or  scorn,  or  rage, 
or  exultation  "  (July  29,  1863). 

Six  weeks  later  a  nearer  grief  assailed  him.  On 
September  10,  1863,  his  wife  died,  in  her  forty-sev 
enth  year.  Not  quite  a  year  before,  she  had  given 
birth  to  her  sixth  son  and  thirteenth  child,  Charles 
Carroll,  the  namesake,  probably,  of  the  gentleman 
in  whose  office  Simms  had  studied  law.  For  some 
time  previously  Simms  had  mentioned  in  his  letters 
that  his  wife  was  not  well ;  but  he  had  no  idea  that 
her  condition  was  critical.  He  wrote  later  to  Doc 
tor  Porcher,  that  the  calamity  fell  upon  him  like  a 
bolt  out  of  a  clear  sky.  He  was  "  seized  with  men 
tal  paroxysms  of  great  violence,  which  threatened 
the  integrity  of"  his  brain.  For  four  days  and 
nights  he  neither  ate  nor  slept ;  and  but  for  opiates 
would  have  gone  mad.  This  attack  was  followed 
by  a  fever  which  prostrated  him  for  a  month. 

Nevertheless,  the  thought  of  his  children  brought 
him  at  last  to  his  feet,  and  he  determined  for  their 
sakes  to  battle  with  the  world  once  more.  How 
the  winter  was  passed  is  not  known,  but  it  appears 
from  a  letter  to  Hayne  that  early  in  May  he  went 
to  Columbia  with  his  eldest  son  and  namesake, 
whose  furlough  had  just  expired.  Gilmore  was 
now  of  age,  and  whatever  his  fears  for  his  son's 


THE  WAE.  277 

safety,  the  father  was  proud  to  have  at  least  one 
of  his  name  and  blood  battling  for  the  Southern 
cause.  The  young  man  went  to  Virginia,  and 
nearly  lost  his  life  at  the  battle  of  Trevilian's.  A 
kind  lady  of  the  neighborhood  nursed  him,  and  sent 
him  home  to  even  harder  labors  than  campaigning 
had  been,  —  labors  of  which  there  will  be  occasion 
to  speak  before  long. 

While  in  Columbia  Simms  saw  Timrod,  and 
when  he  got  back  to  Woodlands,  he  wrote  to 
Hayne,  May  8,  1864,  as  follows:  "I  saw  Timrod, 
and  was  glad  to  find  him  in  better  health  and  spir 
its  than  he  has  had  for  years.  ...  If  his  situation 
lessens  his  opportunities  for  verse  writing,  it  at  all 
events  gives  him  the  creature  comforts,  and  with  a 
young  wife,  he  has  need  of  all  he  can  earn  in  these 
perilous  times.  Besides,  he  is  making  himself  a 
fine  prose  writer,  and  the  practice  in  a  daily  news 
paper  will  improve  his  energies,  without  materially 
disparaging  [?]  the  proprieties  and  graces  of  his 
style.  His  tendency  is  to  the  tragical,  but  a  daily 
newspaper  will  modify  this.  A  daily  newspaper 
in  a  village  like  Columbia  is  far  different  from 
that  of  a  great  commercial  city,  and  the  very  lim 
ited  space  accorded  by  our  papers  now,  lessens  the 
strain  upon  the  mind.  The  labor  is  not  exhaustive, 
nor  very  various.  He  has  only  to  prepare  a  couple 
of  dwarf  essays,  making  a  single  column,  and  the 
pleasant  public  is  satisfied.  These  he  does  so  well 
that  they  have  reason  to  be  so.  Briefly,  our  friend 
is  in  a  fair  way  to  fatten  and  be  happy,  though  his 


278  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

muse  becomes  costive  and  complains  of  his  mesal 
liances.  ...  I  did  not  meet  with  Tim's  wife, 
though  he  gave  me  an  invitation  to  see  her.  But 
the  walk  was  too  much  for  me ;  I  am  scarcely  good 
for  a  mile  heat  nowadays." 

In  the  same  letter  he  referred  to  a  poem  on  Stone 
wall  Jackson,  which  was  still  unfinished  (it  remained 
so),  and  which  he  regarded  as  fine  in  conception  and 
good  in  execution.  He  added :  "  I  should  not  for 
get  to  say  that  recently  I  finished  what  I  think  a 
very  creditable  poem,  entitled  'Midnight  Chaunt  in 
Autumn.'  It  was  begun  several  years  ago,  and 
shortly  after  I  had  lost  two  noble  boys,  in  one  day, 
by  yellow  fever.  But  then  after  writing  a  dozen 
stanzas,  my  heart  failed  me,  if  not  my  head,  and 
the  manuscript  was  thrown  aside.  Happening  re 
cently  upon  it,  and  under  similar  circumstances  of 
suffering  and  season,  I  finished  it.  It  makes  some 
eighty  verses,  quatrains.  You  will  like  it,  I  think, 
though  whether  it  sees  the  printers  in  a  hurry  is 
very  questionable.  With  the  plantation  upon  me, 
the  cares  of  the  family,  anxieties  without  number, 
tithes  and  taxes  to  be  provided,  and  a  still  heavy 
burden  of  correspondence,  life  seems  escaping  from 
me,  frittered  away  in  small  things  and  —  [?]  de 
tails."  Then  follow  brief  references  to  the  pri 
vations  of  the  times.  They  have  enough  food  at 
Woodlands,  but  no  variety.  Stimulants,  too,  are 
wanting,  — though  Rhett  has  recently  sent  him  a 
gallon  of  whiskey, —  and  consequently  he  cannot 
put  a  stop  to  his  chills  and  fever.  But  the  war  will 


THE  WAR.  279 


end  this  year,  and  if  Hayne  wants  to  make  money 
he  had  better  desert  poetry  for  a  while  and  turn  to 
prose. 

So  the  days  passed.  On  September  17,  1864, 
he  wrote  to  Hayne  that  he  was  worn  out,  having 
just  returned  from  Columbia,  whither  he  had  been 
to  attend  the  funeral  of  his  old  friend  Jamison,  who 
had  died  of  the  yellow  fever.  The  disease  was  all 
over  Charleston,  and  so  were  the  enemy's  shells. 
Hood,  he  hears,  has  been  miserably  outgeneraled 
by  Sherman.  Unless  Johnston  or  Lee  or  Beau- 
regard  is  sent  against  the  latter,  the  enemy  will 
penetrate  to  Macon,  Augusta,  Andersonville,  etc. 
He  foresees  the  end,  unless  imbecility  in  office,  civil 
and  military,  be  checked.  On  November  21,  he 
writes  to  the  same  friend  that  he  has  been  harvest 
ing  his  sorry  crop.  Another  year  of  war,  and  the 
planters  will  produce  nothing.  He  has  lost  two 
horses  and  two  mules  within  the  year  and  cannot 
replace  them,  and  all  his  agricultural  implements 
are  worn  out.  In  literature  he  does  little  or  no 
thing.  A  few  short  poems  are  all  he  has  done  in 
eighteen  months.  And  still  he  has  to  work  for  the 
public,  for  he  goes  to  Columbia  next  week  as  a 
member  of  the  Board  of  Visitors  of  Military  Acad 
emies. 

Whether  he  stayed  at  Columbia  from  this  time 
#n,  or  whether  he  returned  to  Woodlands  and  made 
arrangements  for  moving  with  his  younger  chil 
dren  to  the  city,  is  uncertain;  but  it  seems  clear 
that  by  the  first  of  the  new  year,  1865,  he  was  no 


280  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  simrs. 

longer  residing  at  his  plantation.  The  place  was 
not  deserted,  however,  for  a  Mrs.  Pinckney  and 
her  family  were  left  as  occupants.  Simms,  of 
course,  thought  that  Sherman  would  soon  leave 
Savannah  on  his  northward  march;  but  he  proba 
bly  fancied,  as  many  did,  that  Charleston  would 
be  the  object  of  assault,  and  that  the  middle  country, 
in  which  Columbia  lay,  would  either  be  fairly  safe 
from  the  ravages  of  the  main  body  of  the  enemy, 
as  lying  out  of  their  line  of  march,  or  else  that  the 
Confederate  government  would  send  Johnston  to 
defend  South  Carolina's  capital  city.  If  such  were 
his  expectations,  —  and  it  is  fair  to  infer  from  a 
subsequent  publication  that  he  did  indulge  them,  — 
they  were  destined  to  be  cruelly  disappointed. 
Barnwell  and  Midway  lay  directly  in  the  path 
taken  by  the  conquerors,  and  suffered  accordingly. 
Fugitives  began  to  pour  into  Columbia,  bringing 
heart-rending  tales  of  the  desolation  that  followed 
every  step  that  Sherman  took,  and  it  was  not  many 
days  after  the  memorable  first  of  February,  when 
the  northward  march  began,  before  Simms  learned 
that  his  newly  built  house,  his  library  that  had  but 
recently  escaped  so  narrowly,  and  all  his  outhouses 
had  been  completely  destroyed  by  the  same  ele 
ment  that  had  so  often  proved  his  foe.  But  his 
private  losses  were  nothing  when  contrasted  with 
the  horrors  that  were  enacted  under  his  very  eyes 
on  that  Black  Friday  (February  17),  which  saw 
the  beautiful  old  town  of  Columbia  given  up  to 
pillage  and  the  flames. 


THE  WAR.  281 

It  is  not  proposed  to  give  an  account  here  of 
these  horrors  or  to  enter  upon  any  discussion  of  the 
much  vexed  question,  "Who  burned  Columbia?  " 
All  who  desire  to  know  what  Simms  saw  and  what 
he  thought  of  the  conduct  of  the  Northern  general 
and  his  troops  are  referred  to  a  pamphlet  entitled 
"  Sack  and  Destruction  of  the  City  of  Columbia, 
S.  C.,"  published  by  our  author  from  the  ruined  city 
itself  shortly  after  Sherman  left  it.  Simms  never 
wrote  anything  more  graphic  than  this  account  of 
what  he  had  seen  and  heard.  Doubtless  his  vehe 
mence  induced  him  to  exaggerate  in  places,  but  it 
is  hard  to  read  his  stirring  pages  without  coming 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  sack  of  Columbia  is  one 
of  the  greatest  crimes  ever  perpetrated  by  the 
troops  of  a  civilized  country. 

Simms  himself  did  not  fare  badly,  but  when  he 
saw  the  magnificent  library  and  scientific  collections 
of  his  friend  Dr.  R.  W.  Gibbes,  the  antiquarian, 
fired  in  the  owner's  presence  amid  the  jeers  of  rude 
soldiers,  he  doubtless  thought  of  the  fate  of  his  own 
library  at  Woodlands,  and  ground  his  teeth  in  im 
potent  rage.  He  saved  his  watch  by  his  pres 
ence  of  mind,  for  when  accosted  by  soldiers  and 
asked  the  time  of  day,  he  would  look  innocently  to 
where  the  city-hall  clock  once  stood,  and  reply, 
"  Our  city  clock  is  gone,  you  see,  but  it  must  be 
near  — ."  Twelve  hundred  less  astute  citizens, 
anxious  to  please,  are  said  to  have  pulled  out  their 
watches  only  to  have  them  snatched  away. 
Another  and  pleasanter  incident  has  been  recorded 


282  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

by  Mr.  Aldrich,  Simms's  neighbor.  A  young 
Northern  officer  knocked  at  the  door  of  the  house 
where  Simms  and  his  children  were  staying.  The 
novelist  answered  the  summons  in  person,  and  after 
the  usual  formalities,  the  visitor  said,  "  Sir,  I  have 
enjoyed  too  much  pleasure  from  your  works  not  to 
feel  grateful.  You  belong  to  the  Union,  and  I 
have  come  to  see  if  lean  render  you  any  service." 
Simms  thanked  him  and  said  that  he  desired  only 
to  have  his  family  saved  from  intrusion.  The  offi 
cer  departed,  and  in  a  few  moments  a  guard  ap 
peared,  who  were  polite  and  efficient  in  performing 
their  duty.  It  is  but  fair  to  add  that  this  is  by 
no  means  the  only  instance  of  courtesy  on  the  part 
of  individual  officers  and  soldiers  of  the  Union 
army  to  the  oppressed  inhabitants  of  Columbia. 

Another  incident  recorded  by  Mr.  Aldrich  may 
be  referred  to.  Shortly  after  the  destruction  of 
Woodlands  he  met  Simms  at  Columbia,  and  nat 
urally  began  to  sympathize  with  him  over  his 
losses ;  but  Simms  turned  around  almost  fiercely, 
and  exclaimed,  "Talk  not  to  me  about  my  losses, 
when  the  State  is  lost."  He  was  not  the  man,  how 
ever,  to  think  anything  lost  for  long,  and  in  little 
over  a  month  after  the  burning  of  the  city,  he  had 
persuaded  a  printer,  Mr.  Julian  A.  Selby,  to  under 
take  a  triweekly  newspaper  under  the  appropriate 
title  of  the  "Columbia  Pho3nix."  Paper,  press, 
and  type  had  to  be  procured  from  a  distance,  but 
after  toilsome  trips  Selby  succeeded  in  getting  the 
necessary  supplies,  and  on  March  21,  1865,  the 


THE  WAR.  283 

first  number  made  its  appearance.  Some  of  the 
earlier  numbers  are  now  before  me.  Curious, 
badly  printed  sheets  they  are,  about  six  by  eighteen 
inches,  intended  to  fold  so  as  to  give  six  small  pages. 
No  subscriptions  are  taken,  but  each  number  retails 
for  one  dollar.  After  number  nine,  the  paper  be 
comes  a  daily  as  well  as  a  triweekly,  and  persons 
are  allowed  to  subscribe  for  a  month  at  twenty  and 
ten  dollars  respectively,  strictly  in  advance.  The 
veteran  editor  of  nullification  times  is,  of  course, 
at  the  head  of  the  editorial  staff,  —  probably  is  the 
staff,  —  and  is  in  his  element.  Through  the  first 
twelve  numbers  runs  the  account  of  the  sack  of 
Columbia,  which  has  been  already  mentioned  in 
its  pamphlet  form.  Besides  this  there  are  stinging 
editorials,  and,  what  is  more  surprising,  hopeful 
prognostications  of  the  future  of  the  war.  An  oc 
casional  telegram  makes  its  appearance,  and  a  fair 
number  of  advertisements,  among  which  is  one  that 
offers  for  sale  a  set  of  Simms's  romances.  But  an 
editorial  entitled  "Woodlands," which  appeared  in 
the  issue  for  Wednesday,  April  12, 1865,  concerns 
us  more  narrowly,  and  we  note  that  just  four  years 
have  elapsed  since  that  firing  on  Sumter  which 
Simms  so  earnestly  counseled. 

This  editorial  is  nothing  more  than  a  long  ac 
count,  evidently  from  Simms's  hand,  of  the  final 
burning  of  Woodlands.  From  it  we  learn  that 
Mrs.  Pinckney,  the  lady  in  charge  of  the  place, 
sent  a  note  to  General  Blair  requesting  protection 
for  the  dwelling  and  library.  Before  an  answer 


284  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

could  be  received,  bands  of  stragglers  had  entered 
the  house,  only  six  rooms  of  which  had  been  re 
built,  and  begun  their  work  of  destruction.  In 
the  midst  of  this  turmoil,  a  guard  arrived,  which 
was  shortly  followed  by  General  Blair  himself,  in 
company  with  other  officers.  The  gentlemen  spent 
some  time  examining  the  library,  and  when  they 
retired  they  took  away  with  them  only  some  maps 
of  the  State  and  a  couple  of  fowling  pieces.  While 
the  guard  remained,  nothing  was  disturbed,  but 
with  the  departure  of  the  soldiers,  frequent  attempts 
were  made  to  burn  the  house,  and  the  ladies  occu 
pying  it  fled  to  Midway  for  protection.  At  day 
break  the  servants  discovered  that  the  building  was 
in  flames,  and  that  all  their  labors  to  preserve  it 
would  be  fruitless.  The  library  was  the  first  to 
burn,  and  not  a  volume  was  saved.  The  larger 
and  better  furniture  had  been  previously  sent  off, 
and  many  of  the  choicer  books  had  been  packed  in 
boxes,  to  be  removed  whenever  transportation  could 
be  obtained.  Thus  the  thievish  incendiaries,  who 
did  not  care  for  books,  got  little  for  their  pains, 
and  in  view  of  this  fact  some  of  the  neighbors  con 
ceived  the  idea  that  the  house  must  have  been  fired 
by  Simms's  own  negroes,  particularly  by  his  trusted 
body  servant.  This  man  was  actually  tried  by  a 
court  of  freeholders,  but  was  acquitted.  Simms 
evidently  did  not  believe  the  charge,  but  it  was  re 
peated  by  Mr.  Aldrich  five  years  later.  For  the 
credit  of  human  nature  it  may  be  hoped  that  Simms 
was  rijrht. 


THE  WAR.  285 

Before  Simms  wrote  the  description  of  his  losses, 
which  has  been  abridged  above,  Lee  had  surren 
dered  at  Appomattox,  and  the  war  was  practically 
at  an  end.  Probably  it  was  because  he  could  not 
bear  to  think  of  his  people's  losses  that  he  occu 
pied  himself  in  writing  minutely  of  his  own.  He 
did  it  with  a  calmness  which  it  is  difficult  to  imi 
tate.  For  who  shall  describe  how  the  old  partisan, 
who  had  once  in  his  imagination  crushed  the  North 
like  an  egg,  felt  during  those  last  weary  months, 
when  the  defeat  of  all  his  hopes  stared  him  in  the 
face?  He  had  entered  the  period  of  struggle  with 
confidence  in  the  justice  as  well  as  in  the  success  of 
his  cause ;  he  came  out  still  confident  of  the  justice, 
but  struggling  in  vain  to  reconcile  the  two  ideas  of 
a  just  cause  and  an  unsuccessful  one.  Many  hon 
est  people  have  since  his  day  been  trying  with  equal 
futility  to  effect  a  similar  reconciliation.  But  it 
will  not  do.  The  facts  of  universal  history  warn 
them  that  any  such  attempt  is  futile.  No  people, 
however  brave  and  true,  can  wage  an  eventually 
successful  war  with  advancing  civilization,  and 
this  is  what  the  South  was  trying  to  do.  It  is  vain 
to  talk  of  constitutional  rights  that  date  from  a 
century  back ;  it  is  vain  to  say  that  deep  and  honest 
conviction  in  the  truth  of  a  cause  makes  a  cause 
true ;  it  is  vain  to  say  that  mere  money  and  cow 
ardice  and  wrong  are  on  the  successful  side,  and 
all  bravery  and  right  on  the  defeated  side.  Civil 
wars  do  not  divide  a  people  on  such  lines ;  if  they 
did,  it  would  be  idle  to  speak  of  a  nation's  fulfilling 


286  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

its  destiny  under  the  direction  of  God.  But  if 
nations  do  not  fulfill  their  destinies  under  the  direc 
tion  of  God,  what  need  is  there  to  speculate  about 
the  past  or  the  future  at  all ;  what  has  history  to  do 
in  such  a  reign  of  Chaos  and  old  Night  ? 

No!  the  most  loyal  Southerner  may  as  well 
make  up  his  mind  to  face  the  fact  that  the  cause 
for  which  Simms  labored,  and  for  which  so  many 
thousands  of  brave  men  died,  was  a  losing  cause,  in 
consequence  of  the  fact  that  the  people  that  upheld 
it  were  fighting  to  perpetuate  an  institution  op 
posed  to  progress,  an  institution  that  blocked  the 
path  which  a  great  nation  had  to  take.  In  view 
of  this  truth,  it  does  not  seem  necessary  to  insist 
upon  the  part  played  by  the  North  in  the  great 
contest.  It  is  idle  to  deny  that  many  things  were 
done  by  her  zealous  sons,  and  many  things  left  un 
done  by  her  lukewarm  sons,  that  tended  to  hasten 
the  South  upon  her  downward  course,  and  to  add 
to  her  frenzy  and  blindness.  For  it  is  one  of  the 
curses  of  an  institution  like  slavery  that  its  baleful 
effects  are  not  confined  to  its  upholders,  but  react 
upon  its  opponents.  "Sweetness  and  light"  are 
virtues  that  are  rarely  to  be  traced  in  the  history 
of  the  American  people  between  1820  and  1865.  It 
could  not  have  been  otherwise.  "Sweetness  and 
light "  had  little  place  in  a  struggle  against  slav 
ery  ;  for  civilization  was  never  known  to  go  forward 
in  satin  slippers.  Doubtless  many  good  people, 
reading  the  record  of  these  pitiful  times,  have  fan 
cied  that  if  a  little  "sweetness  and  light"  had  ap- 


THE  WAR.  287 

peared,  a  few  more  concessions  been  made,  the  re 
sult  would  have  been  different.  Such  fancies  are 
idle.  An  old  order  of  things  had  been  planted  in 
a  portion  of  this  country  by  perfectly  natural  pro 
cesses;  and  the  time  had  come  for  it  to  give  way 
to  a  new  order  of  things.  But  in  history  there  is 
no  beneficent  Despot  who  says,  "Let  the  old  order 
vanish  and  the  new  be  born."  All  life  is  a  strug 
gle  ;  and  the  higher  planes  of  existence,  individual 
as  well  as  national,  are  reached  by  toil,  by  slow 
degrees,  by  pain.  The  war  of  secession,  therefore, 
having  been  inevitable,  it  is  not  necessary  to  point 
out  all  the  false  steps  made  by  the  North.  These 
false  steps  delayed  the  day  of  change,  and  made 
the  ordeal  through  which  the  South  had  to  pass 
more  bitter  and  terrible,  while  reacting,  as  such 
steps  are  sure  to  do,  upon  the  people  that  made 
them.  The  South,  also,  took  false  steps  of  her 
own  accord,  and,  as  in  the  case  of  the  North,  those 
false  steps  were  fearfully  atoned  for.  But  it  was 
the  forces  of  destiny  in  the  main  that  placed  the 
South  in  her  direful  position ;  and  it  was  the  forces 
of  destiny  that  made  the  North  the  instrument  by 
which  the  whole  country,  North  and  South,  was 
finally  saved  for  what  we  all  believe  will  be  a  glo 
rious  future. 

This  view  of  the  matter  cannot  of  course  be  a 
popular  one,  and  it  has  its  historical  limitations. 
Most  readers  prefer  the  historical  method  of  Car- 
lyle  to  that  of  Buckle,  because  it  is  pleasanter  to 
praise  and  blame  men  than  to  stand  dumb  before 


288  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

the  inscrutable  workings  of  law.  Then  again  few 
readers,  and  few  historians,  see  how  it  is  possible 
to  use  both  methods  at  one  and  the  same  time. 
Yet  this  has  to  be  done.  It  is  just  as  essential  to 
point  out  the  importance  of  representative  men  like 
Garrison  and  Simms  as  to  point  out  the  fact  that 
both  North  and  South  were  merely  fulfilling  their 
respective  destinies.  Law  and  the  individual  that 
embodies  its  workings  are  the  two  foci  around 
which  the  historian  must  move;  and,  if  the  curve 
he  traces  is  not  a  perfect  circle,  it  is  not  his  fault. 
He  is  saved  at  any  rate  from  much  erratic  wander 
ing;  from  dropping  downwards  into  the  regions  of 
the  commonplace,  the  base,  and  the  low.  He  is 
saved,  in  the  particular  instance  we  are  consider 
ing,  from  the  absurdity  of  representing  two  sections 
of  practically  the  same  great  race  as  being  entirely 
the  children  of  light  and  the  children  of  darkness 
respectively.  He  is  saved  from  imagining  that  all 
virtue  concentrated  itself  to  the  north  of  a  certain 
iustoric  line  and  all  vice  to  the  south  of  it,  or  vice 
versa,  and  that  if,  since  the  war,  there  has  been 
some  drifting  of  the  virtues  southward  or  north 
ward,  they  are  promptly  recalled  and  installed  in 
their  proper  places  on  the  eve  of  a  presidential  elec 
tion.  He  is  saved  from  all  this,  and  at  the  same 
time  is  allowed  to  grow  eloquent  over  truly  great 
men  like  Lincoln  and  Lee,  and  also  to  render  the 
negative  service  of  pointing  out  that  not  all  the 
popular  heroes  of  either  side  are  worthy  of  the  hom 
age  they  are  receiving.  He  can  also  point  out  the 


THE  WAR.  289 

instructive  parallel  that  exists  between  the  straggle 
of  Cavalier  and  Puritan  on  either  side  of  the  ocean, 
can  show  that  the  qualities  of  neither  are  thor 
oughly  great  and  lovable,  but  that  in  their  amalga 
mation  a  great  people  must  be  produced.  But  he 
can  also  grow  tedious. 

Yet  before  this  chapter  closes,  attention  should 
be  called  once  more  to  the  trials  that  befell  Simms 
during  these  terrible  years.  He  had  done  much  to 
bring  on  the  war  that  ruined  him,  and  yet  he  had 
only  done  what  seemed  to  him  to  be  just  and  right. 
If  he  had  been  conscious  of  wrong-doing,  it  would 
be  time  to  speak  of  retribution;  but  the  word 
would  be  out  of  place  in  connection  with  an  honest 
man.  As  a  mistaken  man  he  suffered  from  the 
natural  consequences  of  his  mistakes;  but  who 
can  recount  his  losses  without  feeling  that  his  lot 
was  indeed  a  pathetic  one  ?  His  calling  gone,  his 
stereotype  plates  confiscated,  his  dwelling  twice 
burned  down,  his  books  destroyed,  friends,  two 
children,  and  wife  taken  from  him,  and  his  State 
and  section  in  the  dust  of  humiliation  and  defeat, 
who  shall  say  that  he  was  not  a  sorely  tried  man? 
And  yet  he  never  proved  himself  a  truer  or  nobler 
man  than  in  these  days  of  adversity,  —  days  which 
to  him  were  hardly  cheered  by  the  vision  of  the 
new  order  that  was  to  be. 

For  out  of  the  ashes  of  the  old  South,  a  new 
and  better  South  has  arisen.  A  disintegrated  and 
primitive  people  have  become  united  among  them 
selves  and  with  their  former  foes,  and  are  moving 


290  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

forward  upon  the  path  of  progress.  Instead  of  the 
past,  they  have  the  future  to  look  upon ;  instead  of 
a  mere  State,  they  have  a  nation  to  trust  in  and  to 
maintain.  They  have  retained  all  that  was  good 
in  the  old  South,  and  to  their  inherited  virtues 
and  powers  they  will  add,  as  the  years  go  by,  vir 
tues  and  powers  that  must  come  to  any  people  that 
move  forward  with  civilization.  If  they  have  not 
yet  shaken  themselves  loose  from  the  clogs  of  prim 
itive  custom  which  they  have  inherited  from  their 
ancestors;  if  the  slave  in  the  person  of  the  f reed- 
man  still  stands  in  the  way  of  their  progress,  they 
will  nevertheless  push  on,  and  in  the  course  of  years 
the  clogs  will  fall  from  them  and  the  freedman 
will  be  a  help  instead  of  a  hindrance.  They  have 
the  energy  of  a  new  people,  and  they  have  a  terri 
tory  almost  boundless  and  inexhaustible.  They 
have  awakened  from  their  nightmares  and  gone 
out  into  the  fresh  air  of  the  morning,  and  the 
breeze  has  driven  the  fever  from  their  brows. 
They  have  ceased  to  lament  the  tossing  hours,  the 
fitful  anguish  of  the  night  when  tney  called  upon 
God  and  thought  he  did  not  hear  them,  and  the 
burden  of  their  song  of  deliverance  rolls  ever  up 
to  his  throne :  — 

"  Yet  I  doubt  not  thro'  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs, 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  with  the  process  of  the 


CHAPTER  VTEI. 

LAST   YEARS. 

No  precise  statement  can  be  made  about  Simms's 
movements  between  March  and  November,  1865. 
Only  one  scrap  of  writing  in  any  way  connected 
with  him  has  been  discovered ;  and  that  is  the  or 
der  signed  by  Colonel  James  C.  Beecher,  giving 
the  negroes  on  Simms's  plantation  permission  to 
gather  the  growing  crops.  Early  in  November  he 
went  to  New  York  in  order  to  renew  his  relations 
with  his  publishers,  a  purpose  which  was  only  par 
tially  accomplished.  From  the  St.  Nicholas  hotel 
he  addressed  notes  on  November  5  and  7  to  his  two 
Brooklyn  friends,  Mr.  William  H.  Ferris  and  Mr. 
John  J.  Bockie,  asking  if  they  were  afraid  that 
they  would  be  compromised  by  coming  to  see  him. 
They  went  immediately,  and  showed  him  by  many 
acts  of  kindness  that  nothing  that  had  happened 
could  affect  their  friendship  for  him.  Nor  were  his 
other  friends,  like  Duyckinck  and  Lawson,  less 
anxious  to  show  him  that  they  saw  in  the  gray- 
bearded,  sad  old  man  only  the  strong  and  viva 
cious  good  comrade  of  twenty  years  before.  His 
visit  was  probably  a  short  one,  and  in  a  pecuniary 
sense  unprofitable;  but  it  must  have  done  him  a 


292  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

world  of  good  to  see  that  his  misfortunes  could  not 
alienate  his  friends.  In  December  he  was  back  in 
South  Carolina  and  in  editorial  harness,  this  time 
in  Charleston,  as  associate  editor  with  Timrod  of 
the  "Daily  South  Carolinian,"  a  paper  of  which 
Mr.  Felix  G.  De  Fontaine  was  chief  editor  and 
proprietor.  It  was  a  sad  editorial  that  he  wrote 
for  his  readers  on  the  first  Christmas  morning  after 
the  return  of  peace.  Peace !  the  word  was  a  mock 
ery  to  men  and  women  living  under  the  terrors  of 
military  and,  what  was  worse,  negro  rule. 

With  the  new  year  our  materials  again  be 
come  voluminous.  Simms  writes  to  Bockie  and 
Duyckinck  to  negotiate  in  any  way  they  can  with 
his  publishers,  for  newspaper  drudgery  is  terrible. 
De  Fontaine  is  absent  most  of  the  time,  and  Tim- 
rod  does  not  contribute  a  line  for  weeks  together. 
Five  columns  of  editorials  are  not  prepared  in  a  mo 
ment,  and  it  is  not  pleasant  to  think  that  there  is  a 
rumor  on  the  streets  that  the  authorities  are  going 
to  suppress  the  "Carolinian"  for  being  a  little  too 
free  in  its  criticisms  of  passing  events.  Still  more 
unpleasant  is  it  to  work  till  the  wee  small  hours, 
and  to  hear  nothing  said  about  pay  day.  But  as 
he  manages  to  give  a  whist  party  to  eight  old 
friends,  with  plenty  of  oysters  and  whiskey  punch 
to  solace  such  as  do  not  care  for  the  rigor  of  the 
game,  one  perceives  that  his  condition  is  not  alto 
gether  cheerless.  Then,  too,  one  finds  that  no 
amount  of  civil  or  political  troubles  can  put  a  stop 
to  weddings,  and  one  feels  that  Simms  must  have 


LAST  YEARS.  293 

been  glad  to  give  away,  in  his  old  age,  his  daughter 
Chevillette  to  a  man  whom  he  respected  and  ad 
mired,  Major  Daniel  Rowe.  He  also  found  time 
to  write  several  chapters  of  a  new  romance,  "The 
Brothers  of  the  Coast,"  a  pirate  story;  and  if  he 
soon  laid  this  work  aside,  it  must  have  been  some 
comfort  to  feel  that  he  could  work  at  his  old  trade 
at  all. 

But  in  February,  De  Fontaine  and  Timrod  re 
moved  with  their  newspaper  to  Columbia,  and 
Simms,  after  taking  a  brief  trip  to  Florida,  formed 
a  connection  with  the  "Courier."  He  was  all  the 
while,  however,  meditating  a  permanent  removal 
to  the  North,  where  he  would  have  a  better  market 
for  his  wares.  Woodlands  was  practically  useless 
now,  and  his  eldest  son,  Gilmore,  who  was  also 
studying  law,  had  great  difficulty  in  getting  any 
negro  hands  to  work  for  him.  They  moved  to  their 
labor,  Simms  wrote,  like  elephants  with  the  gout. 
They  stole  all  the  growing  crops,  and  shot  down  the 
hogs  and  cattle  that  happened  to  stray  into  the 
woods.  They  all  carried  guns,  and  insulted  every 
white  man  and  woman  they  met,  provided  they 
thought  they  could  do  it  with  impunity.  In  brief, 
the  Devil  was  let  loose  again,  to  quote  the  emphatic 
language  of  our  author. 

Yet  Charleston  was  no  better.  Nobody  knew 
what  to  expect  from  the  conquerors  or  from  the  in 
solent  freedmen.  Provisions  were  at  famine  prices. 
The  richer  a  man  had  been  before  the  war,  the 
poorer  he  was  now  likely  to  be ;  and  his  previous 


294  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

training  rendered  him  unfit  for  any  active  work 
whereby  he  might  better  his  fortunes.  Those  who 
had  saved  plate  and  other  heirlooms  were  gradually 
parting  with  them  for  bread.  Those  who  fancied 
that  they  could  write  spent  almost  their  last  penny 
for  paper  and  scribbled  away  quires  of  pathetic 
trash.  Then  they  bought  a  stamp  and  mailed  a 
letter  to  Simms,  begging  that  he  would  get  their 
books  published.  He  did  try  to  oblige  them  in 
some  cases,  but  without  success ;  and  yet  he  had  no 
money,  to  say  nothing  of  his  time,  to  waste  on  such 
correspondents.  He  wrote  to  Bockie:  "There  is 
not  a  young  author  or  authoress  in  the  whole  South 
that  does  not  call  upon  me  for  counsel  and  assis 
tance.  I  shall  have  to  go  North,  if  only  to  escape 
these  calls  upon  my  time,  my  thought,  patience,  and 
physique."  Moreover,  his  friends  were  leaving 
Charleston.  Dr.  Bruns  was  to  go  to  New  Orleans ; 
Timrod  had  gone  to  Columbia,  and  Paul  Hayne  to 
his  little  cottage  in  the  pine  woods  near  Augusta. 
It  is  true,  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Roach,  with  whom 
he  was  now  living,  would  have  to  be  left  behind, 
along  with  some  of  his  other  children ;  but  as  he  was 
obliged  to  contribute  to  their  support,  as  well  as  to 
support  himself,  it  seemed  as  if  it  were  folly  to 
stay  at  the  South  any  longer. 

So  he  went  North  in  June,  and  stayed  three 
months,  negotiating  with  publishers  and  visiting 
old  friends.  But  for  some  reason  or  other,  partly 
because,  no  doubt,  he  did  not  wish  to  abandon  his 
people,  he  gave  up,  or  rather  postponed,  his  plan 


LAST  YEAES.  295 

of  making  a  permanent  settlement  in  New  York  or 
New  Jersey,  and  came  home  to  Charleston  once 
more.  Before  he  left  New  York  he  wrote  the 
preface  to  a  collection  of  Southern  war  poetry 
which  he  had  long  been  making,  and  also  entered 
into  a  contract  with  the  publishers  of  the  "Old 
Guard,"  a  violent  magazine,  edited  in  the  interests 
of  the  South,  for  a  serial  to  run  through  the  twelve 
numbers  of  186T.  He  also  occupied  his  spare 
hours  by  writing  long  letters  to  the  "Courier"  on 
the  state  of  literature  at  the  North,  and  republished 
his  story  "Marie  de  Berniere"  as  "The  Ghost  of 
my  Husband." 

From  Charleston  he  wrote,  on  October  22,  to 
Hayne  at  Copse  Hill.  He  had  just  run  up  to 
Woodlands  and  found  the  ruins  the  same.  If  he 
ever  despaired,  he  should  do  so  now.  But  such  is 
not  his  wont,  and  he  adds :  "  I  am  now  cudgeling 
my  brains  at  a  new  romance,  the  first  scene  of 
which  opens  at  the  sandhills  of  Augusta.  I  have 
done  some  one  hundred  and  twenty  pages,  and  hope 
by  the  close  of  the  week  to  have  done  one  hundred 
and  fifty  more !  Nous  verrons,  as  old  Ritchie l  was 
wont  to  say;  as  Burns  says,  'Perhaps  it  may  turn 
out  a  song,  perhaps  turn  out  a  sermon. ' 2  I  am 
more  in  the  mood  to  sermonize  than  sing." 

Then  he  adds  some  details  about  their  common 
friend  Timrod.  "Poor  Timrod  is  the  very  Prince 

1  Probably  Ritchie  of  the  Richmond  Enquirer,  but  some  local 
celebrity  may  be  meant. 

2  Epistle  to  a  Young  Friend,  stanza  1. 


296  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

of  Dolefuls,  and  swallowed  up  in  distresses.  He 
now  contemplates  separation  from  his  wife,  that 
she  may  go  forth  as  a  governess  and  he  as  a  tutor, 
in  private  families.  He  can  earn  nothing  where 
he  is  [Columbia];  has  not  a  dollar,  goes  to  bed 
hungry  every  night,  and  suffers  from  bad  health. 
It  is  the  mortifying  thing  to  all  of  us,  that  none  of 
us  can  help  him.  Bruns  and  myself  are  both  living 
from  hand  to  mouth,  and  not  unfrequently  the 
hand  carries  nothing  to  the  cavernous  receptacle." 
Still  Simms  hopes  to  be  able  to  seize  a  week  at 
Christmas  in  order  to  visit  Hayne  and  the  Ham 
monds  at  Augusta. 

On  November  27  he  again  writes  to  Hayne  and 
assures  his  friend  of  his  intention  to  visit  Copse 
Hill.  "Timrod,"  he  adds,  "has  been  on  the 
verge  of  starvation.  He  is  now  acting  as  private 
secretary  to  [Governor]  Orr."  His  own  story  for 
the  "Old  Guard"  is  progressing,  but  he  will  have 
to  work  prodigiously  to  finish  it  by  Christmas.  He 
then  mentions  his  volume  of  war  poetry,  —  a  pro 
duction  which,  in  view  of  all  that  has  been  previ 
ously  said  about  Southern  poetry,  needs  little  com 
ment. 

The  poems  that  composed  it  had  been  collected 
mainly  from  newspapers,  and  Simms  had  had  great 
difficulty  in  communicating  with  the  various  au 
thors,  owing  to  the  wretched  condition  of  the  South 
ern  mails.  In  consequence,  a  number  of  mistakes 
crept  into  the  volume;  but  it  was  the  editor's  own 
fault  when  one  poem  was  printed  twice.  Simms 's 


LAST  YEARS.  297 

preface,  however,  deserves  high  praise  for  its  calm 
tone.  He  has  accepted  the  inevitable.  The  Union 
is  now  the  nation,  and  the  war  poetry  of  the  South 
belongs  to  this  nation  as  truly  as  the  captured  can 
non.  The  poems  themselves  are  naturally  not  so 
calm.  Most  of  them  are  mediocre,  and  they  con 
tain  a  large  amount  of  bathos.  Good  models  such 
as  Campbell  and  Drayton  are  seldom  followed  ex 
cept  by  the  editor  himself,  but  of  course  his  contri 
butions  do  not  rise  to  the  standard  set  by  Timrod 
and  Randall.  On  the  whole  the  metrical  facility 
shown  by  some  of  the  writers  is  striking,  and  in 
spite  of  the  thin  quality  of  the  poems  themselves 
they  frequently  give  evidence  of  culture  and  true 
feeling  on  the  part  of  the  Southern  cavalier. 

Hayne  was  not  the  only  struggling  Southern 
man  of  letters  with  whom  Simms  was  in  correspond 
ence.  Timrod  wrote  him  doleful  letters,  generally 
in  pencil  on  scraps  of  paper.  In  one  of  these 
he  acknowledged  a  power  Simms  always  possessed 
over  despondent  and  yielding  natures.  "  Somehow 
or  other,  you  always  magnetize  me  on  to  a  little 
strength."  Cooke  also  wrote,  complaining  of  the 
criticism  that  "Surrey  of  Eagle's  Nest"  had  re 
ceived  at  the  North,  and  giving  an  account  of  his 
other  literary  labors.  Judge  Gayarre,  too,  wrote 
from  New  Orleans,  giving  a  disheartening  descrip 
tion  of  the  condition  of  that  city.  And  so  Simms 
could  work  away  at  his  romance,  feeling  that  after 
all  he  was  no  worse  off  than  the  rest  of  his  craft, 
and  that  Charlsston,  with  all  its  misery  and  suffer- 


298  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

ing,  was  the  proper  place  for  his  cheerful  and  in 
domitable  spirit  to  move  and  work  in. 

At  Christmas  he  broke  away  from  the  city,  and 
paid  his  promised  visit  to  Hayne  at  Copse  Hill. 
There  he  found  his  noble  friend  living  at  peace  in 
a  little  cabin,  cultivating  his  garden  and  his  muse. 
Hayne  had  made  a  wise  choice.  Years  of  war  time 
had  familiarized  him  with  poverty  and  hardship ; 
he  had  a  contented  nature,  —  why,  then,  should 
he  plunge  into  active  life  and  endeavor  to  grow 
rich  by  outwitting  or  trampling  down  his  neigh 
bors  ?  Why,  if  he  could  sell  his  verses  and  raise 
vegetables,  should  he  undertake  some  respectable 
but  dull  trade  or  profession?  So  he  had  come  to 
the  pine  woods  of  Georgia  and  made  himself  a 
home.  It  was  only  a  cabin,  but'within  its  narrow 
precincts  he  was  destined  to  do  his  best  work,  and 
to  show  to  the  world  that  it  was  possible  for  a 
Southern  writer  to  be  a  conscientious  and  serious 
artist,  as  well  as  a  man  of  tenacious  will  and  un 
flagging  energy. 

It  was  with  a  sad  sort  of  pleasure  that  the  two 
friends  met  to  exchange  their  views  of  the  present, 
and  recount  mournfully  their  recent  experiences. 
Sinims  was  changed  in  many  respects,  but  he  was 
still  as  eager  as  ever  to  pass  the  night  in  profitless 
though  pleasant  discussions  when  he  should  have 
been  trying  to  regain  his  strength  through  sleep. 
Nor  did  host  or  guest  forget  to  fill  their  glasses 
while  the  talk  flowed  on.  But  pleasant  visits  do 
not  usually  last  long,  and  in  two  weeks  Simms  was 


LAST  YEARS.  299 

back  in  Charleston,  working  as  hard  as  ever.  He 
had  sent  on  five  hundred  pages  of  his  story  "  Josce- 
lyn"  to  the  publishers  before  leaving  Charleston 
for  his  holiday,  and  the  first  few  chapters  had  al 
ready  appeared ;  but  now  he  had  so  much  to  do,  in 
helping  the  poor  people  around  him,  that  he  felt 
that  the  romance  was  dragging  on  his  hands.  His 
judgment  was  right.  One  feels  as  one  reads  this 
last  of  the  revolutionary  romances  that  even  Simms 
himself  has  broken  down.  Only  here  and  there 
can  any  touches  of  his  former  power  be  discov 
ered,  and  but  for  the  fact  that  he  got  a  few  dollars 
by  it,  one  could  wish  that  he  had  never  written 
it.  And  yet  how  could  the  worn-out  old  man  have 
done  anything  better  under  the  circumstances  ?  It 
seems  a  shame  to  criticise  his  work  at  all. 

Nevertheless,  he  could  still  write  strong  and  pa 
thetic  letters.  Here  are  a  few  sentences  from  one 
written  to  his  friend  Bockie,  on  March  20,  1867 : 
"  But  no  language  can  describe  the  suffering  which 
prevails,  especially  among  that  class,  accustomed 
to  better  days,  whose  pride  compels  them  to  starve 
in  silence.  There  are  hundreds,  in  this  city,  as  I 
learn  from  good  authority,  who  are  daily  making 
sale  of  such  remnants  of  plate,  crockery,  furniture, 
etc.,  as  have  been  left  them,  to  provide  the  daily 
bread.  And  there  are  very  few  of  us  who  do  not 
require  the  exertion  and  labor  of  every  hour,  far 
into  the  night,  to  keep  above  the  water.  You 
know  already  that  I  am  finding  bread  for  my  chil 
dren  only  out  of  my  brains,  and  you  can  readily 


300  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

guess  how  pitiable  is  the  result.  One  of  my 
literary  friends  [Timrod],  of  fine  capacity,  is  lit 
erally  dying  by  inches,  of  poverty  and  disease  to 
gether  ;  having  wife,  and  widowed  sister,  and  sev 
eral  nephews  and  nieces  in  the  same  condition 
of  distress  from  poverty.  But  the  subject  is  too 
terrible,  and  I  gladly  turn  from  it." 

He  then  goes  on  to  thank  Bockie  for  his  kind 
ness  in  sending  presents  to  himself  and  his  daugh 
ters,  —  all  of  his  intimate  Northern  friends  were  del 
icately  generous  to  him  during  these  trying  years, 
—  and  he  is  especially  grateful  for  the  gift  of  a  sew 
ing  machine.  He  writes :  "  Fortunately  my  daugh 
ters  have  all  been  taught  to  do  their  own  work,  fit 
their  own  dresses,  and  they  go  to  work  cheerfully, 
and  sing  merrily  while  they  toil;  and  their  elas 
ticity  helps  to  encourage  and  strengthen  me  in  my 
labor.  The  picture  of  Irving,  etc.,  will  help  to 
cover  the  bomb-shell  holes  still  in  our  walls.  The 
room  in  which  I  sleep  is  still  excoriated  with  those 
missiles.  Please  advise  me,  whatever  is  sent  me, 
of  the  names  and  addresses  of  the  parties  to  whom 
I  should  be  grateful."  Then  he  goes  on  to  recount 
how  his  publishers  are  straitened  for  money ;  how 
his  son  Gilmore  is  sick ;  how  he  himself  will  have 
to  go  up  to  Woodlands  soon,  to  pay  the  taxes  and 
look  after  things ;  finally,  how  he  suffers  with  now 
chronic  complaints,  and  divides  his  time  between 
taking  medicine  and  writing  twenty  pages  of  fools 
cap  per  day.  "For  the  last  three  nights,"  he 
adds,  "I  have  written  till  two  in  the  morning. 
Does  not  this  look  like  suicide?  " 


LAST  YEARS.  301 

A  few  weeks  later,  April  3,  he  wrote  to  Hayne, 
giving  a  doleful  account  of  poor  Timrod,  who,  by 
the  way,  was  just  about  to  make  a  visit  to  Copse 
Hill.  The  letter  contained  a  brief  reference  to 
one  of  Simms's  characteristic  acts  of  generosity, 
which  deserves  recording.  "  I  was  fortunate 
enough  to  procure  for  him  [Timrod]  one  hundred 
and  fifteen  dollars,  which  is  eked  out  to  him  weekly 
at  twenty  dollars  per  week.  When  that  goes,  God 
knows  what  the  poor  fellow  will  do,  as,  in  truth, 
people  here  are  almost  as  destitute  as  himself. 
We  have  here  [at  his  daughter's  house]  three  fam 
ilies  rolled  into  one,  numbering  about  sixteen,  — 
say  ten  grown  and  the  rest  children,  —  and  about 
thirty  dollars  per  week  is  what  we  have  to  live 
upon.  I  need  not  tell  you  what  prices  are." 
Simms  does  not  tell  Hayne  how  much  trouble  it 
cost  him  to  raise  the  money  for  Timrod;  but  I  have 
been  informed,  in  a  letter  from  Mr.  Samuel  Lord, 
that  he  spent  days  in  getting  it.  And  this  while 
he  himself  needed  to  husband  all  his  time  and 
strength. 

In  a  subsequent  letter  he  gave  his  friend  Bockie 
a  brief  description  of  Charleston's  chief  trouble. 
"Things  grow  worse  and  worse  with  us  daily,  and 
your  Yankee  preachers  are  stirring  up  the  vani 
ties  of  the  negro  to  such  a  degree  as  to  keep  him 
from  work,  and  prompt  him  to  aspire  to  supreme 
possession  of  the  country.  His  insolence  increases 
day  by  day,  and  your  military  governors  are  stim 
ulating  it  by  a  studious  effort  to  degrade  the  whites 


302  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

in  all  possible  ways."  Then  he  adds  a  few  words 
as  to  his  personal  discomforts:  "I  am  compelled 
to  share  my  room,  in  which  I  sleep,  work,  write, 
study,  with  my  two  sons,  Gilmore  and  Govan.  I 
am  accordingly  cabined,  cribbed,  confined,  —  I, 
who  had  such  ample  range  before,  with  a  dozen 
rooms,  and  a  house  range  for  walking  in  bad 
weather  of  a  hundred  and  thirty -four  feet.  I  am 
drudging,  as  a  matter  of  course." 

But  he  had  his  consolation  in  the  work  of  dis 
tributing  the  three  hundred  and  fifteen  dollars  that 
had  been  sent  by  his  friend  Mr.  Ferris  for  the  re 
lief  of  the  Charleston  poor,  and  he  was  very  proud 
to  write  back  that  he  had  supplied  for  several 
weeks  the  necessities  of  twelve  families,  containing 
some  forty-five  persons.  He  was  also  busy  corre 
sponding  with  brother  Masons,  and  distributing 
the  money  sent  in  response  to  his  appeals.  Then, 
too,  he  had  his  own  work  to  look  after,  especially 
the  contemplated  sale  of  such  of  his  revolutionary 
documents  as  had  escaped  his  two  fires.  For  years 
he  had  been  collecting  every  letter  and  paper  he 
could  find  that  bore  upon  the  Revolution  or  upon 
South  Carolina  history,  and  he  still  had  enough 
left  to  make  it  worth  his  while  to  sell  them,  now 
that  he  needed  money.  It  doubtless  hurt  him  to 
part  with  them,  but  there  was  no  reason  why  he 
should  be  more  fortunate  than  his  old  friend  Tefft, 
of  Savannah,  whose  magnificent  collection  of  auto 
graphs  was  also  for  sale.  So  he  secured  the  ser 
vices  of  Duyckinck  and  Bockie,  and  eventually  sold 


LAST  YEARS.  303 

his  papers  to  the  Long  Island  Historical  Society, 
in  whose  custody  they  still  remain.  Before  he 
parted  with  them,  however,  he  prepared  a  mono 
graph,  entitled  "Memoir  and  Correspondence  of 
Colonel  John  Laurens,"  which  was  published  as 
the  seventh  number  of  the  "Bradford  Club  Series." 
Another  piece  of  work  on  which  he  was  engaged 
at  this  time  was  a  revised  "Mother  Goose,"  which 
was  offered  to  a  New  York  firm,  but  was  respect 
fully  declined.  It  still  exists  in  manuscript,  and 
one  who  glances  over  it  can  only  feel  that  the  pub 
lishers  were  not  particularly  hard-hearted  in  re 
jecting  it.  One  knows  not  whether  to  smile  or 
sigh  at  the  thought  of  the  old  man  cudgeling  his 
brains  in  order  to  improve  on  "  Hey  diddle  diddle, 
the  cat  and  the  fiddle."  But  it  was  one  of  Simms's 
failings  to  think  that  he  could  do  everything,  and 
one  is  not  surprised  to  find  him,  a  few  months 
later,  writing  a  play,  in  four  days,  for  a  third-rate 
actor  named  Bailey,  who  was  going  to  astonish  the 
Southern  public  by  a  series  of  plays  written  by 
native  authors  and  presented  by  eminent  and  pre 
sumably  native  actors.  Nor  is  one  surprised  to 
find  Bailey  declaring  Simms's  drama  a  fine  one, 
but  regretting  his  inability  to  put  it  on  the  boards 
just  now.  It  is  rather  amusing  to  learn  that  Simms 
was  induced  to  write  this  play  by  one  of  his  female 
admirers,  —  a  certain  fair  authoress  of  North  Caro 
lina,  who  was  so  alarmed  for  the  morals  of  New 
York  city  that  she  submitted  to  the  managers  of 
the  "Black  Crook"  a  perfectly  proper  spectacular 


304  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

drama  to  be  acted  in  its  stead.  Of  such  may  be 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  but  hardly  the  great  Amer 
ican  drama,  for  which  some  people  are  looking  as 
anxiously  as  others  are  for  the  great  American 
novel. 

In  the  latter  part  of  June,  Simms  again  went 
North,  partly  on  his  own  business,  partly  to  secure 
Masonic  aid  for  his  struggling  friends.  On  July 
2,  he  got  a  characteristic  note  from  Lawson,  ask 
ing  why  an  impecunious  Southerner  should  insist 
on  paying  five  dollars  a  day  at  the  New  York  hotel 
when  good,  cheap  board  could  be  had  at  Yonkers, 
where  he,  Lawson,  was  spending  the  summer. 
Simms  took  the  hint  and  paid  his  friend  a  short 
visit.  He  had  his  daughter,  Mary  Lawson,  along 
with  him,  and  the  two  were  rather  oppressed  by  the 
invitations  they  received  from  friends  old  and  new. 
They  paid  flying  visits  to  Great  Barrington,  where 
Simms  revived  old  memories,  and  to  Boston,  where 
he  met  a  new  friend  who  had  been  previously 
known  only  through  an  extensive  correspondence. 
This  was  Mr.  Arthur  W.  Austin,  a  stanch  opponent 
of  abolitionism,  who  shortly  after  the  war  began 
to  write  long  letters  to  Simms  on  political  subjects, 
and  —  what  was  better  —  to  send  him  many  delica 
cies  like  good  old  port,  that  could  not  be  easily  ob 
tained  in  Charleston  during  the  days  of  reconstruc 
tion.  While  visiting  Mr.  Austin,  Simms  fell  into 
the  hands  of  some  Masonic  friends,  who  trudged 
him  around  the  streets  under  an  August  sun,  and 
so  exposed  him  to  an  attack  of  ague.  He  had  the 


LAST  YEARS.  305 

consolation,  however,  of  knowing  that  he  had  been 
an  object  of  public  curiosity,  and  that  not  a  few 
people  had  taken  him  for  "Semmes  the  Pirate." 

But  in  spite  of  sickness  and  constant  traveling 
he  was  compelled  to  keep  busy  with  his  pen.  His 
correspondents  were  pressing  for  replies,  and  their 
letters  were  not  as  a  rule  so  humorous  as  the  one  in 
which  Hayne  described  how  he  had  been  recently 
warned  by  an  anonymous  note  from  Richmond 
never  to  venture  to  put  his  foot  in  that  city  again, 
and  all  because  he  had  published  a  poem  in  which 
he  had  spoken  more  mildly  of  the  Union  cause 
than  the  anonymous  writer  thought  proper.  There 
is  a  grim  humor,  however,  to  be  found  in  the  nu 
merous  letters  written  him  by  Southern  publishers. 
They  are  full  of  compliments  to  the  "Nestor  of 
Southern  literature  "  and  of  requests  that  he  will 
become  a  regular  contributor  to  the  columns  of 
a  new  journal  which  is  certain  to  be  successful. 
Simms  was  frequently  seduced  into  making  engage 
ments,  and  he  kept  his  part  of  the  bargain;  but 
the  publishers  did  not  keep  theirs,  —  a  peculiarity 
on  the  part  of  Southern  publishers  which  Simms, 
Hayne,  and  Cooke  were  in  the  habit  of  alluding  to 
in  their  letters  of  this  period.  Had  the  poor  fel 
lows  got  all  the  money  due  them  from  the  publish 
ers  of  the  mushroom  papers  that  sprang  up  in  the 
South  after  the  war,  their  circumstances  would 
have  been  fairly  comfortable.  As  it  was,  they  con 
gratulated  themselves  when  they  got  a  dollar  from 
such  sources.  Perhaps  they  thought  it  the  part  of 


306  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

patriotism  to  continue  writing  for  these  pretentious 
and  short-lived  journals ;  perhaps,  like  most  good 
old  Southerners,  they  were  slow  to  learn  that  a 
man's  word  is  not  always  as  good  as  his  bond; 
perhaps  they  thought  that  the  sanguine  publishers 
would  really  pay  if  they  could  —  so  they  wrote  on 
with  a  patience  and  faith  that  excite  our  admira 
tion. 

Toward  the  last  of  September  Simms  went  South 
again ;  at  least  he  is  found  at  that  time  among  his 
favorite  North  Carolina  mountains,  shooting  deer, 
listening  to  hunters'  yarns,  making  notes  on  the 
proper  construction  of  bear-traps,  —  in  a  word, 
gathering  materials  for  other  stories  with  his  cus 
tomary  care.  On  his  arrival  in  Charleston  he 
heard  the  sad  news  of  Timrod's  death,  and  im 
mediately  set  to  work  to  write  a  sketch  of  him  for 
a  Baltimore  weekly,  "Southern  Society,"  and  to 
raise  money  for  the  family  left  in  such  destitution. 
The  letters  he  had  received  from  Timrod  during 
the  months  preceding  the  latter 's  decease  are  too 
harrowing  to  bear  quotation.  The  evils  inflicted 
by  poverty  were  bad  enough,  but  the  consciousness 
that  he  was  dying  by  inches,  and  the  suffering  oc 
casioned  by  a  severe  and,  perhaps,  carelessly  per 
formed,  operation,  had  rendered  the  last  year  of 
the  young  poet's  life  simply  unendurable.  And 
yet  in  the  midst  of  his  sufferings  he  had  contrived 
to  write  the  exquisite  poem  that  will  ever  preserve 
his  name,  —  the  memorial  ode  to  which  attention 
has  already  been  called. 


LAST  YEAES.  307 

But  scarcely  had  Simms's  correspondence  with 
Timrod  terminated,  before  he  began  to  write  fre 
quent  letters  to  another  poet,  this  time  a  Northern 
one,  George  H.  Boker.  Simms  had  written  a  re 
view  for  the  "Courier"  of  S.  Adams  Lee's  "Book 
of  the  Sonnet,"  and  had  taken  occasion  to  claim 
a  high  position  for  Boker  as  a  poet.  The  latter 
wrote  expressing  his  astonishment  that  he  should 
at  last  get  some  justice  done  him  and  that,  too, 
at  the  hands  of  a  Southerner.  He  declared  that 
Simms's  words  had  filled  him  with  fresh  hope,  and 
added  that  he  would  be  glad  to  send  his  kind  critic 
other  volumes  of  his  poetry,  including  his  "Poems 
of  the  War, "unless,  indeed,  the  views  expressed  in 
the  latter  work  would  shock  Simms  too  much. 
Like  the  sensible  man  he  was,  Simms  told  him  to 
send  his  verses  by  all  means,  no  matter  what  senti 
ments  they  contained.  Then  followed  a  brisk  cor 
respondence  in  which  the  two  men  expressed  their 
views  of  poetry  as  an  art,  and,  it  would  seem,  —  for 
only  Boker 's  letters  have  been  read,  —  related  some 
of  the  difficulties  under  which  they  had  labored. 

Boker  confessed  that,  like  Simms,  he  had  pub 
lished  simply  to  put  himself  on  record.  The  in 
difference  of  Charleston  to  Simms  was  paralleled 
by  that  of  Philadelphia  towards  himself.  When, 
on  November  3,  he  wished  to  send  Simms  copies  of 
"Plays  and  Poems"  and  "Poems  of  the  War," 
Lippincott's  messenger  went  over  the  whole  city 
and  failed  to  find  a  copy  of  either.  But  Boker 
did  more  than  complain  and  say  uncomplimentary 


308  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

things  of  New  England,  —  for  he  does  not  seem  to 
have  had  much  more  love  for  that  section  than 
Simms  had,  or  than  another  Pennsylvanian,  Sena 
tor  William  Maclay,  had  had  nearly  a  hundred 
years  before,  —  he  got  Simms  to  write  for  the  new 
magazine  which  Lippincott  was  about  to  start  as  a 
rival  to  the  "Atlantic  Monthly."  Certainly  one 
much  needed  draft  from  this  source  found  its  way 
to  our  author's  pocketbook.  It  is  refreshing  to 
find  him  getting  good  money  occasionally  for  the 
work  which  was  surely  but  slowly  undermining  his 
constitution. 

The  year  closed  much  as  it  had  begun.  Poverty 
was  still  grinding  the  South  down  and  Simms  was 
still  working  more  for  other  people  than  for  him 
self.  He  got  his  friend  Austin  to  send  him  the 
few  copies  of  the  1860  edition  of  Timrod's  poems, 
still  remaining  in  the  hands  of  Ticknor  and  Fields, 
and  sold  them  for  the  benefit  of  the  poet's  family. 
He  did  what  he  could  to  comfort  his  daughter 
Chevillette,  Mrs.  Howe,  for  the  death  of  her  first 
son.  He  lent  encouragement  to  his  son  Gilmore, 
who  had  just  been  admitted  to  the  bar.  He  wrote 
lovingly  to  Bruns,  who  was  despondent  over  the  hor 
rors  of  negro  rule  in  New  Orleans,  and  the  diffi 
culty  a  gentleman  had  in  making  both  ends  meet. 
But  he  still  kept  before  him  the  possible  necessity 
of  a  removal  to  some  place  in  Maryland  or  New 
Jersey,  where  he  could  work  in  peace.  A  letter 
from  Bruns,  however,  recalling  the  merry  time  the 
writer  and  Simms  and  Hayne  and  Jamison  had 


LAST  YEARS.  309 

had  at  Woodlands,  on  New  Year's  night,  1859, 
must  have  made  the  thought  of  ever  leaving  Caro 
lina  almost  intolerable. 

The  new  year,  1868,  opened  with  an  endeavor 
to  render  Woodlands  habitable  once  more,  if  not 
profitable.  It  was  not  possible  to  rebuild  on  the 
ample  scale  of  the  old  house,  but  Simms  thought 
he  saw  his  way  clear  to  erecting  a  comfortable 
frame  dwelling  which  would  shelter  his  declining 
years.  But  carpenters  were  hard  to  get  and  lum 
ber  was  for  a  long  time  unobtainable.  It  had  to 
be  brought  to  the  place  on  rafts ;  and  just  when  the 
rafts  were  expected,  the  Edisto  would  be  carried 
out  of  its  banks  by  a  freshet.  Still  the  work  was 
persevered  in,  and  by  July,  Simms  could  give  his 
friend  Ferris  an  account  of  the  hunting  and  fishing 
he  was  having,  as  well  as  of  the  difficulty  of  getting 
the  carpenters  out  of  the  house.  He  could  com 
plain,  too,  that  his  building  had  cost  him  twice  as 
much  as  he  had  expected,  and  that  he  was  almost 
penniless.  In  addition  to  the  robberies  committed 
by  the  negroes,  he  had  had  to  submit  to  conduct  on 
the  part  of  publishers  which,  if  given  a  less  harsh 
name,  was  even  more  trying.  One  contract  which 
was  to  pay  him  six  hundred  dollars,  and  for  which 
he  had  written  seven  hundred  pages  of  manuscript, 
failed  him  just  at  the  time  his  house  building  had 
to  be  paid  for.  So  he  left  for  New  York  to  make 
fresh  contracts  in  no  very  cheerful  frame  of  mind. 
Death,  too,  had  not  spared  him  this  year,  for  in 


310  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

February  a  favorite  grandchild,  a  daughter  of  Mrs. 
Roach,  had  died  while  he  was  still  living  in 
Charleston.  But  through  it  all  he  had  worked 
away  on  a  new  story,  entitled  "Voltmeier,"  the 
scene  of  which  was  laid  in  North  Carolina,  where, 
it  will  be  remembered,  he  had  hunted  in  the  pre 
ceding  autumn.  He  had  even  dreamed  of  becom 
ing  a  professional  lecturer  once  more,  and  had  de 
livered  one  lecture  in  Charlotte,  North  Carolina, 
which  had  been  warmly  applauded. 

At  midsummer  he  made  his  Northern  trip  some 
what  more  profitable  than  had  been  usual  with  him 
of  late  years.  He  entered  into  contracts  for  three 
stories  to  appear  serially  during  the  next  year,  and, 
as  he  had  only  one  on  hand  and  that  not  completed, 
he  hastened  back  to  Woodlands  and  set  to  work 
with  a  desperate  energy  that  was  destined  to  wreck 
his  health  and  shorten  his  life.  He  wrote  to  Fer 
ris,  on  November  21,  that  he  had  written  six  hun 
dred  pages  of  manuscript  since  his  return,  and  that 
he  was  keeping  two  stories  going  at  once.  Besides 
this  he  was  annotating  some  of  Shakespeare's  plays, 
whether  for  publication  or  for  Ferris 's  private  de 
lectation  does  not  appear.  He  was  also  collecting 
and  sending  to  Ferris,  who  was  fond  of  autographs,- 
all  of  the  important  letters  he  had  saved  from  his 
correspondence.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  from 
his  biographer's  point  of  view  he  could  hardly  have 
busied  himself  more  usefully  than  with  this  last- 
mentioned  labor. 

With  the   exception  of  an   occasional   visit  tc 


LAST  TEARS.  311 

Charleston,  the  next  nine  months  were  spent  by 
Simms  at  Woodlands,  with  the  respite  of  scarcely 
a  single  day  from  hard  and  grinding  labor.  A  let 
ter  to  Hayne,  written  probably  in  February,  1869, 
gives  a  pathetic  account  of  the  way  he  was  spend 
ing  his  time  and  strength.  After  saying  that  he 
has  recently  had  a  spell  of  illness,  and  after  con 
gratulating  Hayne  on  the  fact  that  the  latter  is  able 
to  support  himself  on  the  money  his  verses  bring 
him,  Simms  writes :  "  I  am  living  quite  obscurely, 
whether  at  home  or  abroad,  and  you  will  seldom  see 
my  name  hackneyed  in  the  papers.  I  do  not  now 
write  for  fame  or  notoriety  or  the  love  of  it,  but 
simply  to  procure  the  wherewithal  of  life  for  my 
children ;  and  this  is  a  toil  require  [requiring]  con 
stant  labor.  My  recent  illness  is  simply  the  con 
sequence  of  a  continued  strain  upon  the  brain  for 
four  months,  without  the  interval  of  a  single  day. 
In  that  time  I  wrote  near  two  thousand  pages  note 
paper  of  manuscript  on  two  works,  to  say  nothing  of 
an  immense  correspondence  and  numerous  asides  at 
the  calls  of  friends,  etc.  I  am  still  suffering  very 
much  from  debility  and  the  usual  concomitants 
of  student  life.  ...  I  write  you  now  only  by  an 
assertion  of  dogged  will." 

Then  he  goes  on  to  give  particulars  about  his 
work :  "  Year  before  last  I  wrote  a  Revolutionary 
romance  for  the  '  Old  Guard '  magazine,  called 
'  Joscelyn. '  .  .  .  This  year  I  have  been  writing  for 
the  same  work  a  story  called  '  The  Cub  of  the  Pan 
ther,  '  which  will  be  completed  in  seven  or  eight  num- 


312  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

bers.  Half  a  dozen  are  already  written.  I  have  also 
written,  between  last  spring  and  last  Christmas,  a 
romance  of  the  mountains,  called  '  Voltmeier,  or  the 
Mountain  Robber,'  which  is  now  in  course  of  pub 
lication  in  the  'Western  World.'  This  is  a  long 
story,  making  some  thirteen  hundred  pages  note 
paper  closely  written.  I  am  brooding  now  over  a 
third  work  of  length,  for  which  I  have  a  contract, 
and  should  have  had  a  good  deal  of  it  ready  by  this 
time,  but  for  my  illness.  Voila  tout!  I  write 
[or  wrote],  by  the  way,  for  two  Baltimore  journals, 
from  neither  of  which  have  I  got  any  pay.  I  have 
balances  due  by  both,  which  I  fear  I  shall  never  get 
a  cent  of."  The  condition  of  Woodlands  is  then 
briefly  alluded  to:  "I  am  again,  as  you  see,  at 
Woodlands.  I  have  rebuilt  one  wing  of  my  house, 
a  little  cottage  of  only  four  rooms  on  the  old  foun 
dation.  I  tried  to  do  six  rooms,  but  my  money 
failed  me.  Gilmore  and  my  son-in-law,  Major 
Howe,  are  farming  here  on  a  small  scale.  ...  I 
arrived  in  Charleston,  from  New  York,  the  20th 
of  October  last,  spent  one  day  in  the  city,  and  then 
came  on  to  the  plantation,  which  I  have  not  left  one 
day  since.  To-day  I  am  expecting  guests  from  the 
North.  But  for  these  and  other  visitors  preceding 
them,  I  would  have  gone  for  a  week  to  Charleston, 
in  the  hope  of  benefit  from  change." 

In  July  he  did  go  to  Charleston,  and  then  to  New 
York  and  Boston.  It  was  the  last  time  he  was  to 
visit  his  old  friend  Lawson  and  his  new  friend  Aus 
tin.  But  he  was  sick  and  depressed,  had  little 


LAST  YEARS.  313 

money,  and  found  the  publishers  reluctant  to  ad 
vance  more.  He  returned  to  Woodlands  early  in 
the  fall,  and  after  some  desultory  work  resolved 
with  the  new  year  to  take  up  his  permanent  abode 
with  Mrs.  Roach,  in  Charleston,  where  he  could  be 
sure  of  the  nursing  he  needed.  Before  his  removal, 
he  wrote  a  long  letter  to  Hayne,  December  22, 
giving  an  account  of  his  condition:  "For  my  part, 
and  for  the  last  six  months,  I  have  been  literally 
hors  de  combat  from  overwork  of  the  brain,  — 
brain  sweat,  as  Ben  Jonson  called  it,  —  and  no  body 
sweat,  no  physical  exercise.  In  the  extremity  of  my 
need,  I  took  contracts  .  .  .  for  no  less  than  three 
romances,  all  to  be  worked  at  the  same  time.  I 
got  advances  of  money  on  each  of  these  books,  and 
the  sense  of  obligation  pressing  upon  me,  I  went 
rigidly  to  work,  concentrating  myself  at  the  desk 
from  20th  October,  1868,  to  the  1st  of  July,  1869, 
nearly  nine  months  without  walking  a  mile  in  a 
week,  riding  but  twice,  and  absent  from  work  but 
half  a  day  on  each  of  these  occasions.  The  conse 
quence  was  that  I  finished  two  of  the  books  and 
broke  down  on  the  third,  having  written  during 
this  period  some  three  thousand  pages  of  the  mea 
sure  of  these  which  I  now  write  to  you  "  [large  note]. 
He  then  goes  on  to  say  that  he  has  written  a  few 
pieces  for  a  new  magazine  that  has  been  started  in 
Charleston,  the  "Nineteenth  Century."  It  does 
not  pay,  but  still  he  wants  the  South  to  have  an 
organ.  Poor  fellow !  as  if  the  Reverend  Mr.  Hicks 
could  give  it  an  "organ  "  when  he  himself  had  tried 


314  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

repeatedly  and  failed;  as  if  "organs"  were  needed 
in  those  dreadful  days  when  what  was  wanted  was 
not  sentimental  gush  or  vain  vindictive  howlings, 
but  the  energy  and  faith  he  had  always  shown,  and 
which,  sooth  to  say,  were  to  become  virtues  of  that 
new  South  which  he  was  not  to  be  permitted  to  see 
and  rejoice  over. 

So  he  went  to  Charleston,  declaring  that  he  had 
few  objects  now  in  life  save  to  see  his  children 
happy.  Only  six  had  been  left  him  of  fifteen,  and 
of  his  six  grandchildren,  three  had  died.  He  had 
fought  a  good  fight,  and  was  weary,  but  still  he 
prayed  that  he  might  die  with  harness  on  his  back. 
No  lean  and  slippered  pantaloon  for  him,  so  he 
wrote  Hayne ;  he  would  rather  die  now  than  drift 
into  helpless  imbecility.  And  he  feels  that  he 
ought  still  to  support  himself,  and  yet  he  can  make 
little  or  no  money.  It  was  a  boon  when  on  De 
cember  1,  1869,  he  was  invited  to  write  a  prologue 
for  the  opening  of  the  new  Academy  of  Music  in 
Charleston.  A  flash  of  his  old  strength  shot 
through  him  and  he  wrote  some  vigorous  couplets, 
for  which  he  received  thirty  dollars  from  the  man 
agers  and  five  and  twenty  as  a  compliment,  from 
some  unknown  source. 

Before  an  account  is  given  of  the  last  months 
of  this  active  and  heroic  life,  a  few  words  must  be 
said  about  the  three  romances  which  had  been  pub 
lished  as  serials  in  1869.  "The  Cub  of  the  Pan 
ther:  a  Mountain  Legend,"  or,  as  Simms  subse 
quently  put  it,  "  A  Hunter  Legend  of  the  Old  North 


LAST  YEARS.  315 

State,"  ran  through  the  year  in  the  "Old  Guard," 
and  deserves  only  one  comment.  It  shows  plainly 
that  Simms  was  beginning  to  realize  that  the  day 
of  the  romancer  was  over,  and  that  that  of  the 
realist  was  dawning.  He  did  his  best  in  the  early 
chapters,  and  indeed  throughout  the  story,  to  give 
a  plain  description  of  the  life  of  a  peculiar  moun 
tain  people.  He  did  not  succeed,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  in  cutting  himself  loose  from  his  earlier 
methods  of  composition,  nor  did  he  succeed,  as  some 
later  writers  have  done,  in  making  a  minute  and  at 
the  same  time  charming  study  of  the  primitive  peo 
ple  among  whom  the  scene  of  his  story  was  laid. 
But  he  did  his  best,  and  while  doing  it,  showed  that 
his  mind  had  by  no  means  crystallized. 

The  second  romance,  "Voltmeier,  or  the  Moun 
tain  Men:  a  Tale  of  the  Old  North  State,"  ran  for 
several  months  in  a  New  Yo"rk  sensational  weekly. 
In  this,  too,  especially  in  the  early  chapters,  Simms 
endeavored  to  lay  aside  the  stately  robes  of  the  ro 
mancer,  but  he  soon  fell  into  his  old  ways  and 
wrote  an  exciting  story  after  the  style  of  "Border 
Beagles."  There  is  the  usual  plotting  and  coun 
terplotting,  the  mystery,  intrigue,  and  adventure, 
familiar  to  readers  of  sensational  stories,  and  the 
wonder  is  how  a  man  in  Simms's  condition  could 
have  written  it  all.  The  name  of  the  third  story, 
on  which  he  broke  down,  is  not  known,  but  he  seems 
to  have  partially  kept  his  contract  by  letting  George 
Munro  republish  in  his  "Fireside  Companion," 
under  the  title  of  "The  Island  Bride,"  the  novel- 


316  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

ette   issued  twenty -five  years  before   as    "Helen 
Halsey." 

Such  were  the  last  romances  of  the  man  who  had 
once  been  considered  Cooper's  not  unsuccessful 
rival.  Through  no  fault  of  his  own  he  had  been 
driven  to  become  a  mere  penny-a-liner  to  fourth- 
rate  publications.  When  "Guy  Rivers  "  was  pub 
lished,  he  was  able  to  declare  that  it  should  pass 
through  no  reader's  hands.  There  is  now  among 
his  papers  a  bundle  of  manuscript,  —  a  story  evi 
dently  written  during  or  after  the  war,  —  on  which 
the  rather  curt  comments  of  a  reader,  advising 
against  publication,  are  still  to  be  read.  But  the 
change  of  fortune  that  had  come  to  him  is  too  piti 
ful  to  dwell  upon. 

On  the  second  day  of  the  new  year  Simms  wrote 
to  Hayne  to  inform  him  that  he  had  reached 
Charleston  and  that  he  was  still  holding  out  against 
his  bodily  infirmities.  As  of  old  he  felt  that  he 
must  be  Hayne 's  mentor  and  give  him  advice  about 
his  poetry.  "  For  myself, "  he  added,  "  nothing  need 
be  said.  I  am  rapidly  passing  from  a  stage  where 
you  young  men  are  to  succeed  me,  doing  what  you 
can.  God  grant  that  you  may  be  more  successful 
than  I  have  been.  ...  I  have  little  money  left, 
and  my  last  days  would  be  cheerless  in  the  last  de 
gree  but  for  numerous  good  friends,  who  will 
hardly  allow  me  to  suffer.  .  .  .  But  I  am  weary, 
Paul,  and  having  much  to  say,  I  must  say  no 
more;  but  with  love  to  all,  God  be  with  you  in 


LAST  YEARS.  317 

mercy."  On  March  26,  he  wrote  Hayne  that  he 
had  made  a  short  trip  to  Woodlands,  and  had 
seemed  at  first  to  improve,  but  that  at  the  end  of 
his  stay  another  acute  attack  (probably  some  kidney 
trouble)  had  come  on.  He  was  now  slowly  im 
proving,  but  since  his  return  to  the  city  had  been 
out  of  the  house  but  once,  and  then  only  for  an 
hour.  He  was  almost  too  feeble  to  quit  his  sofa. 
He  added  that  he  had  been  told  that  the  "  Cosmo 
politan,"  which  was  publishing  a  story  of  his,  had 
been  abandoned  by  its  editor.  The  story  was 
unfinished,  and  he  had  written  to  try  to  get  his 
manuscript  back,  but  had  failed.  Would  Hayne 
please  try  his  hand  upon  the  neglectful  editor  ? 1 

But  though  so  feeble,  Simms  kept  valiantly  to  his 
determination  to  die  in  harness.  He  wrote  edito 
rials  for  the  "Courier,"  among  them  one  commem 
orating  the  death  of  his  old  friend  Richard  Yeadon. 
He  could  hardly  have  helped  feeling  that  his  own 
time  was  drawing  near,  and  that  soon  one  of  his 
friends  would  be  performing  a  similar  service  for 
him.  Almost  his  last  appearance  in  public  was  on 
May  3,  when  he  delivered  the  opening  address  at 
the  Floral  Fair  held  by  the  Charleston  County 
Agricultural  and  Horticultural  Association.  It 
was  fitting  in  more  ways  than  one  that  he  should 
have  been  asked  to  deliver  this  address,  for  he  had 
always  been  a  lover  of  flowers,  and  it  was  a  feeble 
sign  that  the  people  of  Charleston  were  at  last  be- 

1  What  the  name  of  the  story  -was,  or  where  the  Cosmopolitan 
was  published  are  matters  about  which  I  am  in  the  dark. 


318  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

ginning  to  appreciate  his  worth.  The  address, 
which  was  entitled  "The  Sense  of  the  Beautiful," 
was  printed  in  the  "Courier"  and  warmly  praised, 
too  warmly  for  its  intrinsic  merits,  but  not  too 
warmly  for  its  author's  services  to  his  State  and 
city.  It  showed  that  Simms's  mind  was  in  his 
latter  days  turning  often  toward  the  ideal,  and  en 
deavoring  to  find  in  the  consciousness  that  he  had 
always  loved  the  true  and  the  beautiful  a  solace  for 
his  present  disappointments,  for  the  "brute  and 
baboon  and  barbarous  days,"  in  which  he  avowed 
that  he  and  his  hearers  were  living. 

On  June  2,  he  wrote  his  last  letter  to  Hayne,  de 
scribing  himself  as  having  suffered  from  "a  long 
and  exhausting  malady,"  and  as  "worn  to  such 
diminutive  proportions  "  that  his  friends  would  no 
longer  recognize  him.  On  June  6,  his  illness, 
which  seems  to  have  been  a  complete  physical 
breakdown  combined  with  kidney  and  stomachic 
troubles,  took  an  alarming  turn.  By  Thursday 
night,  June  9,  all  hope  was  given  up,  but  he  lin 
gered  on  until  Saturday,  the  llth,  when  he  died 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  He  was  conscious 
to  the  last,  and  he  seemed  to  die  peacefully,  as  if 
glad  to  be  at  rest.  His  children  and  friends  were 
around  him,  and  every  comfort  had  been  supplied 
him  during  his  illness.  One  of  the  last  persons  to 
talk  with  him  was  his  old  friend  the  Reverend  James 
W.  Miles,  who,  almost  as  feeble  as  himself,  had 
left  a  sick  bed  in  order  to  come  to  his  side. 

When  the  news  of  his  death  reached  the  public, 


LAST  TEARS.  319 

the  bell  of  St.  Michael's  was  tolled  and  expressions 
of  sincere  grief  were  heard  on  all  hands.  Charles 
ton  in  her  adversity  was  slowly  becoming  conscious 
of  how  cruelly  she  had  treated  her  ablest  son.  The 
"Courier"  of  Monday  was  in  mourning,  and  con 
tained  an  appreciative  editorial  upon  him  from  the 
pen  of  Dr.  Porcher.  The  funeral  took  place  on 
Monday,  at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  from  St. 
Paul's  Church.  The  church  was  thronged,  in  spite 
of  the  threatening  weather.  A  heavy  rain  came  up 
just  as  the  coffin  reached  the  building,  where  it  was 
met  by  the  two  officiating  clergymen,  the  Reverend 
J.  W.  Miles  and  the  Eeverend  C.  C.  Pinckney. 
Nor  did  the  rain  prevent  a  large  number  of  those 
present  at  the  church  from  following  the  body  to 
that  Magnolia  Cemetery,  at  the  consecration  of 
which  Simms  had  read  a  poem  twenty-one  years 
before.  There  the  worn-out  body  was  committed 
to  a  grave  in  a  corner  of  a  plat  that  had  been  set 
aside  for  the  erection  of  a  monument  to  John  C. 
Calhoun. 

The  country  at  large  was  so  much  occupied  in 
retrieving  the  losses  caused  by  the  war  and  in  wel 
coming  the  birth  of  a  new  school  of  fiction,  that 
the  death  of  a  romancer  whose  day  was  passed  did 
not  attract  any  widespread  attention.  Still  some 
notice  of  the  event  was  taken  by  the  press,  and  the 
animus  of  the  opinions  expressed  was  generally 
favorable.  But  as  the  years  have  rolled  by,  the 
man  and  his  work  have  been  more  and  more  for- 


320  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

gotten.  It  is  true  that  his  romances  have  been 
kept  before  the  public  in  a  cheap  form,  and  have 
been  popular  with  boys,  at  least  with  Southern 
boys.  But  a  great  many  well-informed  Southern 
men  and  women  have  never  heard  of  Simms,  and 
others  are  apt  to  make  the  mistake  made  by  the 
curious  Boston  populace  and  confound  him  with 
"Semmes  the  Pirate."  It  may  be  doubted  whether 
many  Northern  readers  of  culture  open  his  romances, 
although  they  may  be  familiar  with  his  name  from 
references  made  to  it  in  histories  of  American  lit 
erature.  It  is  true  that  two  years  ago  an  appreci 
ative  article  treating  of  his  revolutionary  romances 
appeared  in  the  "Atlantic  Monthly,"  but  it  was 
doubtless  something  of  a  revelation  to  many  of  the 
readers  of  that  magazine.  As  a  rule  the  meagre 
references  that  have  been  made  to  him  in  text 
books  and  elsewhere  have  been  somewhat  deprecia 
tory,  without  any  very  clear  reason  being  given  for 
the  depreciation. 

If  his  name  has  been  thus  eclipsed  in  America, 
it  is  no  matter  of  surprise  to  learn  that  it  is  hardly 
known  in  England.  It  is  a  little  strange,  however, 
to  be  assured,  as  I  have  been,1  that  two  such  widely 
differing  personages  as  Lord  Beaconsfield  and  Mr. 
Martin  Farquhar  Tupper  should  have  expressed  a 
warm  admiration  for  Simms 's  romances.  It  is  also 
pleasant  to  find  an  anonymous  writer,  in  the  "  Lon« 
don  Quarterly  Review  "  for  January,  1885,  in  the 

1  By  General  James  Grant  Wilson  and  by  the  late  Mr.  Tupper 
of  Charleston,  a  cousin  of  the  English  author. 


LAST  YEARS.  321 

course  of  an  article  on  American  novels,  doing 
Simms  the  justice  to  declare  that  he  was  an  author 
whose  works  were  far  less  known  in  England  than 
they  should  be,  "but  who  produced  numerous  pow 
erful  sketches  of  genuine  American  incident,"  — 
sketches  which  "are  much  better  worth  reading  than 
many  of  the  novels  which  have  made  fame  and 
fortune  for  inferior  writers."  The  same  critic  con 
cluded  his  notice  by  saying:  "The  United  States 
have  thus  far  produced  few  imaginative  writers  of 
greater  desert  than  Simms  in  his  particular  line." 

But  we  have  left  South  Carolina  and  the  year 
1870  somewhat  far  afield,  and  must  return  to  them 
for  a  moment.  Perhaps  the  sincerest  mourner 
among  all  the  old  novelist's  friends  was  Paul 
Hayne.  On  July  9,  he  wrote  as  follows  to  Dr. 
Porcher :  — 

"Behold,  also,  how  our  old  circle  of  ancient 
friends  and  comrades  is  thinning!  One  by  one 
they  have  quitted  our  sides,  until  at  length  old 
Simms  himself,  whom  I  had  got  into  the  habit  of 
regarding  as  immortal,  has  finished  his  course,  and 
said  his  final  farewells!  .  .  .  Gallant  old  man! 
whatever  his  faults,  I,  for  one,  loved  him  with  all 
my  heart!  And  there  is  no  doubt  that  his  time 
had/w%  come.  He  had  fought  a  good  fight  and 
kept  the  faith,  at  least  the  faith  he  had  plighted  to 
his  own  genius  and  will. 

"Yet,  as  Pierpont  says  of  his  deceased  child, 
'I  cannot  make  him  dead!  '  So  much  vitality  was 
there  in  the  man,  so  vivid  is  his  image  before  the 


322  WILLIAM  GILMOEE  SIMMS. 

'mind's  eye,'  that  all  attempts  at  a  realization  of 
his  death  utterly  fail!  .  .  .  Simms's  genius  never 
had  fair  play  f  Circumstances  hampered  him! 
Thus,  the  man  was  greater  than  his  works." 

In  a  letter  to  the  same  gentleman,  of  August  4, 
he  expressed  himself  freely  as  to  the  merits  and  de 
merits  of  Simms's  work :  — 

"A  really  great  author  (whether  in  prose  or 
verse)  Simms  emphatically  was  not,  and  there  is 
no  use  in  maintaining  so  fulsome  a  proposition. 
But  his  talents  were  splendid,  and  his  whole  life 
seems  to  me  noble,  because  of  the  'grit,'  the  perse 
verance,  the  indomitable  energy  which  it  displayed. 

"I  've  not  the  remotest  idea  that  his  works  will 
endure.  They  were  too  carelessly  written.  They 
lack  the  ' labor  limce'  to.  an  extent  which  is  dis 
tressing.  Nevertheless  Simms  is  worthy  of  all 
honor.  '  God  rest  his  soul. ' ' 

While  Hayne,  whose  own  sense  of  the  necessity 
of  artistic  training  had  grown  wonderfully  during 
his  residence  among  the  Georgia  pines,  was  writing 
thus  of  his  comrade's  memory,  steps  were  being 
taken  in  Charleston  to  perpetuate  that  memory  in 
an  enduring  fashion.  About  two  weeks  after  his 
death,  a  meeting  of  Simms's  friends  discussed  the 
propriety  of  raising  a  monument  to  him  as  soon  as 
possible.  Committees  were  appointed  and  speeches 
were  made,  but  the  times  were  still  too  hard  for  an 
undertaking  of  the  kind  to  succeed.  After  some 

1  Through  a  regrettable  mistake,  this  letter  was  used  without 
the  knowledge  of  Mr.  Hayne's  descendants. 


LAST  YEARS.  323 

years  and  various  meetings,  however,  enough  money 
was  raised  to  warrant  the  committee's  engaging 
J.  Q.  A.  Ward  to  prepare  a  bronze  bust  of  the  ro 
mancer,  which  it  was  proposed  to  erect  on  the  Bat 
tery.  Simms  had  once  been  heard  to  express  a  wish 
that  he  should  have  no  other  memorial  than  a  sim 
ple  shaft  of  South  Carolina  granite  broken  at  the 
top.  But  the  committee  preferred  the  bust,  and, 
after  it  had  been  inspected  and  approved  by  some 
of  Simms's  Northern  friends,  Bryant,  Lawson, 
Bockie,  and  others,  it  was  mounted  on  a  pedestal 
of  native  granite,  and  was  duly  unveiled,  with  ap 
propriate  ceremonies,  on  the  eighth  anniversary  of 
his  death,  June  11,  1879.  At.  the  time  of  its  erec 
tion  it  was  the  only  memorial  of  the  kind  in  Charles 
ton,  the  Powers  statue  of  Calhoun,  in  the  city  hall, 
having  been  destroyed  during  the  war,  and  the  twig 
planted  in  the  centre  of  the  city-hall  park,  to  mark 
the  site  of  a  proposed  monument  to  Robert  Y. 
Hayne,  having  grown  to  a  tree.  There  is  still  no 
thing  to  mark  the  spot  where  the  remains  of  the 
noble  old  man  lie,  save  the  name  "Simms"  carved 
on  the  granite  curbing  that  marks  off  the  family 
section.  This  should  not  be.  Charleston  owes 
it  to  herself  to  do  what  she  can  to  atone  for  the 
long  years  of  neglect  which  were  all  the  reward  she 
gave  to  her  devoted  son  during  his  lifetime.  His 
wish  should  be  carried  out,  and  on  the  broken  shaft 
should  be  carved  the  epitaph  which  he  composed 
for  himself:  "Here  lies  one  who,  after  a  reason 
ably  long  life,  distinguished  chiefly  by  unceasing 


324  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

labors,  has  left  all  his  better  works  undone."  And 
to  these  sad  words  should  be  added  some  expression 
of  regret  by  his  people  for  their  long  neglect,  and 
of  belief  that  the  work  he  did  and  the  example  he 
set  can  never  wholly  die. 

Our  task  is  well-nigh  ended.  It  only  remains  to 
endeavor  to  summarize  briefly  the  chief  personal 
characteristics  of  the  man  whose  career  has  been 
the  subject  of  these  pages,  and  to  estimate  the  value 
of  the  work  he  accomplished.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  on  both  of  these  points  enough  has  been  given 
to  enable  the  reader  to  form  his  own  conclusions ; 
but  it  is  always  to  be  expected  that  the  biographer 
who  has  made  a  special  study  of  a  man  and  his 
writings  should  record  his  own  conclusions  in  a 
compact  and  intelligible  way.  And  first  of  Simms 
as  a  man. 

From  both  his  parents  Simms  inherited  a  san 
guine,  impulsive,  and  impressible  temperament. 
It  would  seem  that  the  father's  traits  were  more 
strongly  impressed  upon  the  son  than  the  mother's; 
for  there  was  little  in  Simms 's  nature  that  was 
feminine.  The  most  obvious  effects  of  the  father's 
roving  nature  and  passion  for  adventure  have  been 
noted  already ;  but  it  should  be  remarked  that  to 
this  source  is  possibly  due  much  of  the  intellectual 
restlessness  which  drove  Simms  from  one  style  of 
composition  to  another,  and  which  never  let  him 
rest  long  enough  to  polish  and  perfect  his  work. 
It  is  true  that  he  always  gave  as  an  excuse  for  his 


LAST  YEARS.  325 

hurried  manner  of  writing  the  necessity  he  was 
under  of  earning  his  daily  subsistence ;  but  it  would 
seem  that  the  cause  of  his  unartistic  methods  of 
work  lay  deeper  in  his  own  inherited  temperament. 
Nor  should  we  forget  in  this  connection  the  ef 
fects  upon  him  of  the  turmoil  and  struggle  of  his 
early  years,  of  the  humiliating  treatment  he  under 
went  at  the  hands  of  a  cold  and  unsympathetic 
aristocracy,  and  finally  of  the  general  tone  of 
good-natured  vulgarity  and  conceited  ignorance  so 
characteristic  of  America  during  the  earlier  years 
of  this  century.  All  these  influences  affected  his 
character  as  much  as  they  did  his  literary  work. 
They  made  him  dogmatic,  opinionated,  eccentric, 
capable  at  one  time  of  doing  great  things  and  at 
another  of  doing  something  unexpectedly  foolish. 
To  adopt  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  terminology,  they 
made  him  oftentimes  appear  to  be  a  mere  Philistine, 
when  in  reality  the  whole  of  his  life  was  given  up 
to  the  endeavor  to  make  himself  a  man  of  culture, 
permeated  with  "sweetness  and  light."  A  barba 
rian  he  could  not  be,  since  he  was  not  ah  aristocrat 
by  birth.  Perhaps  there  has  never  been  a  man 
whose  development  was  so  sadly  hampered  by  his 
environment;  and  that  he  succeeded  as  far  as  he 
did  in  escaping  from  the  effects  of  his  environment 
should  move  our  admiration  and  respect. 

It  is  needless  to  dwell  upon  the  native  kindness 
of  heart,  the  buoyant  spirits,  the  superb  physical 
and  moral  energy  of  the  man,  for  these  have  been 
fully  set  forth  already.  Though  at  times  seem- 


326  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

ingly  eaten  up  with  self-conceit,  he  was  never  either 
really  conceited  or  selfish.  He  was  never  ashamed 
to  acknowledge  his  own  deficiencies ;  never  so  busy 
with  his  own  affairs  as  to  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  a  call 
for  help  or  sympathy.  The  amount  of  good  he  did 
in  his  last  feeble  years  cannot  be  calculated. 
Those  who  saw  his  eccentricities  only,  laughed  at 
him;  those  who  knew  him  well,  loved  him  more 
and  more  until  their  love  almost  grew  to  reverence. 
If  he  often  did  a  foolish  action,  he  never  did  a 
mean  one ;  and  though  not  symmetrically  great,  he 
was  essentially  noble.  He  had  virtues,  too,  not 
specially  common  in  his  time  and  section.  While 
fond  of  stimulants  and  excitement,  he  refrained 
always  from  intoxication ;  while  fond  of  the  story 
that  is  told  to  men  only,  he  was  irreproachable  in 
his  private  morals.  In  religious  matters  he  was 
often  charged  with  infidelity,  but  the  charge  cannot 
be  sustained.  Although  he  never  joined  a  church, 
and  although  he  held  opinions  which  most  people 
would  pronounce  unorthodox,  there  is  every  reason 
to  conclude  that  he  believed  in  the  essential  inspi 
ration  of  Christianity.  If  this  be  not  so,  then  he 
was  far  less  radical  in  his  unbelief  than  might  have 
been  expected  from  a  knowledge  of  his  character. 
On  the  whole,  one  forms  the  impression  that  Simms 
was  a  vigorous,  hearty  man,  with  a  versatile  and 
talented  mind,  a  very  large  heart,  an  indomitable 
will,  and  keen  if  not  always  delicate,  sensibilities. 
His  weaknesses  and  eccentricities  were  partly  due 
to  inherited  tendencies,  partly  to  environment,  but, 


LAST  YEARS.  327 

though  they  marred  the  symmetry  of  his  character, 
they  nevertheless  could  not  efface  the  strength  and 
loveableness  of  his  personality. 

There  is  little  reason  to  differ  from  Hayne  with 
regard  to  the  quality  of  Simms's  literary  work. 
"A  really  great  author,"  he  "emphatically  was 
not;  "  a  talented  author  he  undoubtedly  was.  His 
failure  in  poetry  was  marked  because  the  unfavor 
able  influences  of  his  environment,  combined  with 
the  unfavorable  characteristics  of  his  inherited  tem 
perament,  naturally  showed  to  their  fullest  effect 
in  that  region  of  art  where  individual  peculiarities 
are  least  tolerable.  It  has  been  shown  already  how 
impossible  it  was  that  the  ante-bellum  South  should 
produce  a  great  artist  in  verse;  and  Simms's  fail 
ure  is  rendered  all  the  more  conspicuous  from  the 
fact  that  he  endeavored  to  excel  in  forms  of  poetry 
that  require  the  highest  artistic  skill.  But  even  if 
he  had  written  poetry,  it  would  still  have  been  Eng 
lish  poetry,  which  would  not  have  suited  his  patri 
otic  American  heart.  So  after  all  there  is  no  great 
reason  to  be  sorry  for  the  fate  of  his  verses.  Yet  it 
should  not  be  forgotten  that  his  poetry  was  a  great 
solace  to  him,  and  that  it  lifted  him  above  this  earth 
and  its  cares,  and  that  as  no  one  need  read  it  who 
does  not  wish  to,  no  one  is  any  the  worse  for  it. 

With  regard  to  his  prose,  attention  must  be  con 
fined  to  his  revolutionary  and  colonial  romances. 
If  the  quality  of  permanence  is  to  be  found  in  his 
work,  it  is  to  be  found  here.  His  miscellaneous 
critical,  political,  and  biographical  work  has  served 


328  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

its  transitory  purpose  and  is  already  forgotten.  His 
historical  work  will  be  consulted  occasionally  by 
special  students,  but  is  of  little  general  value.  It 
is  of  far  more  value,  to  the  Southerner  at  least,  to 
know  that  Simms  never  ceased  to  bewail  the  indif 
ference  of  his  people  to  their  own  history,  and  that 
he  never  failed  to  encourage  local  students  like 
Pickett  and  Meek  of  Alabama  to  prosecute  and 
publish  their  researches.  When  the  Southern 
people  get  a  true  history  of  themselves,  they  will 
find  that  they  have  many  things  to  learn  and  to  un 
learn  ;  and  one  of  the  things  they  will  vainly  wish 
to  forget  will  be  their  utter  indifference  to  the  un- 
seconded  and  uncheered  efforts  of  men  like  Simms, 
to  rescue  the  history  of  their  State  and  section 
from  the  dust  of  oblivion. 

To  return  however  to  the  main  question :  Will 
the  revolutionary  and  colonial  romances  be  read, 
say  fifty  years  hence?  The  border  romances  are 
omitted  from  consideration  for  the  already  expressed 
reason  that  they  should  never  have  been  written, 
since  they  have  nothing  ennobling  in  them.  If 
the  friends  of  romance  are  to  make  any  firm  stand 
against  the  attacks  of  the  realists,  they  must  make 
it  right  here,  on  the  essentially  ennobling  qualities 
of  great  romances.  That  the  romance,  in  its  old 
form  at  least,  will  play  again  a  serious  part  in  the 
history  of  literature  is  open  to  grave  doubt.  Lit-  • 
erary  forms,  like  nations,  seem  to  play  their  parts 
and  then  retire  from  the  stage.  But  because  no 
Englishman  will  ever  again  write  a  great  epic  is 


LAST  TEAKS.  329 

no  reason  why  "Paradise  Lost  "should  cease  to  de 
light  us.  And  so,  because  we  shall  see  no  more 
Scotts  or  Coopers  is  no  reason  why  we  should 
prophesy  a  day  of  oblivion  for  their  works.  If 
their  works  fill  any  one  of  the  world's  various 
needs,  they  will  be  preserved  in  the  world's  mem 
ory  and  regard.  Yet  it  would  seem  that  their 
works  ennoble  all  who  read  them  in  the  right  spirit, 
and  that  therefore  their  works  will  live;  for  it  is 
no  little  thing  to  ennoble  a  man's  mind  and  heart, 
and  it  is  perhaps  as  useful  a  thing  to  ennoble  a 
boy's  mind  and  heart.  Hence,  if  Scott  and  Cooper 
become  more  and  more  the  authors  of  boyhood, 
their  place  will  be  no  less  honorable  and  secure. 

But  was  Poe  right  when  he  ranked  Simms  above 
the  herd  of  American  romancers,  just  after  Cooper 
and  Brockden  Brown,  and  are  Simms 's  best  ro 
mances  ennobling?  It  would  seem  that  Poe  was 
right.  Cooper  at  his  best  is  superior  to  Simms  at 
his  best,  and  there  is  no  need  to  compare  them  at 
their  worst.  Brockden  Brown,  though  a  follower  of 
Godwin,  had  a  narrow  vein  of  real  genius,  which 
can  hardly  be  asserted  of  Simms.  In  versatility 
and  talents  Brown  was  Simms 's  inferior,  and  in 
estimating  the  work  of  the  two  writers  one  is  almost 
inclined,  in  balancing  quantity  with  quality  of  work 
(a  process  which  most  critics  neglect),  to  place  the 
two  men  upon  the  same  level.  Any  comparison 
with  Hawthorne  is  of  course  out  of  the  question. 
With  regard  to  romancers  like  Dr.  Bird,  Kennedy, 
and  Paulding,  to  say  nothing  of  writers  like  Miss 


330  WILLIAM  GILMOBE  SIMMS. 

Sedgwick  or  Dr.  Mayo  or  Melville,  Poe  would  ap- 
pear  to  have  stated  Simms's  position  correctly. 
Both  with  regard  to  quantity  as  well  as  quality  of 
work  he  is  their  superior.  His  style  at  its  best  is 
not  inferior  to  theirs,  and  with  none  of  them  is  it 
safe  to  make  much  question  of  style.  He  was  more 
frequently  slipshod  than  they,  but  that  is  all  that 
can  be  said  in  their  favor.  In  imaginative  vigor, 
in  power  of  description,  in  the  faculty  of  giving 
movement  to  his  stories,  he  leaves  them  behind.  He 
strikes  one  as  being  a  born  writer,  a  professional ; 
their  works  read  like  those  of  amateurs. 

To  consider  now  the  second  question :  Are  his  best 
romances  ennobling?  In  some  respects  it  would 
seem  that  they  are.  They  deal  with  an  eventful 
period,  when  a  young  people  was  struggling  for  its 
rights.  They  show  how  high  and  low,  rich  and 
poor,  were  animated  by  a  common  patriotism,  how 
they  suffered  for  the  cause  they  espoused,  how  they 
triumphed  through  their  bravery  and  faith.  They 
make  the  reader  familiar  with  great  characters  like 
Marion,  and  with  historic  events  of  no  little  im 
portance  to  a  nation  destined  to  greatness.  More 
over  they  are  full  of  the  freshness  of  swamp  and 
forest,  of  the  languorous  charm  of  Southern  climate 
and  scenery.  Then,  too,  they  are  full  of  the  heroic 
deeds  of  common,  unlettered  men,  and  are  thus 
more  stimulating  than  many  of  those  high-flying 
romances  in  which  lords  and  ladies  undergo  their 
remarkable  adventures.  It  is  true,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  they  are  full  of  an  unregulated  patriot- 


LAST  YEARS.  331 

ism  which  regards  every  Tory  and  Englishman,  with 
a  few  exceptions,  as  a  brute  and  a  villain;  that 
they  deal  with  bloodshed  and  crime  ad  nauseam; 
that  they  are  in  many  places  commonplace  and 
dull.  Still,  after  all  is  said,  it  would  seem  that 
the  balance  stands  in  Simms's  favor.  He  has  de 
scribed  with  vigor,  and  sometimes  with  charm,  the 
events  of  an  interesting  epoch;  he  has  reproduced 
the  characteristic  features  of  a  life  that  is  gone ; 
he  has  painted  a  landscape,  which,  if  it  still  exists, 
has  nevertheless  been  subject  'to  many  changes. 
No  one  will  ever  do  the  same  work  as  well,  and  it 
was  worth  doing.  Hence  I  cannot  conclude  with 
Hayne  that  his  works  will  die.  They  will  never 
be  very  popular,  at  least  with  older  readers,  but 
boys  will  continue  to  delight  in  the  daring  deeds  of 
scout  and  partisan,  and  cultivated  and  curious  per 
sons  will  turn  to  them  as  faithful  pictures  of  inter 
esting  epochs  in  their  country's  history. 

But  here,  too,  it  must  again  be  noted  that  Simms 
was  more  English  than  he  thought  himself.  There 
was  of  course  more  room  for  originality  in  his  es 
says  in  prose  fiction  than  in  his  poetry,  —  his  excur 
sions  into  the  realms  of  what  Mr.  Theodore  Watts 
is  fond  of  denominating  " essential  art."  His  meth 
ods  were,  however,  those  of  his  English  predecessors, 
and  whenever  he  took  his  eye  off  his  local  subject  he 
wrote  like  an  Englishman.  He  made  constant  use 
of  the  stock  materials  of  former  and  contemporary 
romancers,  and  the  comparison  which  more  than 
one  writer  has  instituted  between  him  and  the  Eng- 


332  WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS. 

lish  G.  P.  R.  James  is  in  many  respects  admissible. 
But  Simms  had  what  James  had  not :  a  small  par 
ticular  field  which  he  made  his  own,  and  that  field 
was  essentially  American.  For  this  reason  he  will 
live  longer  than  James,  and  for  this  reason  he  de 
serves  a  place  among  American  men  of  letters. 
His  place  is  not  a  high  one ;  but  it  should  never 
be  forgotten  that  he  was  not  only  a  pioneer,  but 
the  pioneer,  of  American  literature,  whose  destiny 
forced  him  to  labor  in  the  least  favorable  section  of 
all  America  for  successful  literary  work.  When  his 
environment  is  considered,  the  work  he  did  will  be 
deemed  worthy  of  admiration  rather  than  of  fault 
finding. 

Yes,  Hayne  was  right.  The  man  Simms  "is 
worthy  of  all  honor."  Whether  as  a  literary  toiler, 
working  successfully  under  most  harassing  condi 
tions  ;  whether  as  a  misguided  patriot,  striving  for 
what  he  believed  to  be  his  section's  good;  whether 
as  a  defeated,  worn-out  spirit,  laboring  to  relieve 
the  distresses  of  his  children  and  his  friends,  the 
man  Simms  ceases  to  be  a  mere  man  and  assumes 
proportions  that  are  truly  heroic.  His  State  may 
still  point  to  her  Calhouns  and  McDuffies,  and 
his  section  may  point  to  politicians  and  soldiers, 
contemporary  lights  that  have  cast  and  still  cast 
him  in  the  shade;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether 
South  Carolina,  or  indeed  the  whole  South,  has 
produced  in  this  century  a  man  who  will  better 
stand  a  close  scrutiny  into  his  motives  and  his  life- 
work  than  William  Gilmore  Simms. 


APPENDIX. 


A  PARTIAL   BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  SIMMS'S  WRITINGS. 

LACK  of  space  rather  than  of  materials  has  neces 
sitated  the  omission  of  many  bibliographical  details. 
Every  entry  has  been  reduced  "  to  its  lowest  terms ; " 
and  only  such  notes  as  appear  to  be  indispensable  have 
been  admitted.  Simms  was  such  a  voluminous  writer 
that  had  full  title  pages  been  given,  and  had  all  his 
known  contributions  to  periodical  literature,  encyclopae 
dias,  etc.,  been  chronicled,  this  appendix  would  have  ex 
ceeded  all  reasonable  bounds.  It  is  believed,  however, 
that  it  will  be  found  to  be  freer  from  errors  than  any 
previous  attempt  at  a  Simms  bibliography,  as  well  as 
more  complete.  Of  such  previous  attempts  that  of  Alli- 
bone  is  the  best.  Other  bibliographies  are  to  be  found 
in  James  Wood  Davidson's  "  Living  Writers  of  the 
South  "  (1869)  ;  in  John  C.  Stockbridge's  "  Catalogue 
of  the  Harris  Collection  of  American  Poetry  "  (1886)  ; 
in  the  "  International  Magazine  "  (v.  432  f.)  ;  in  the 
"Literary  World"  (Boston,  xiii.  351)  ;  and  finally  in 
Duyckinck's  and  other  cyclopaedias.  These  bibliographi 
cal  lists  have  been  freely  consulted,  but  the  bulk  of  this 
appendix  is  the  result  of  individual  investigation.  Every 
book  (or  article)  mentioned,  except  translations  and 
such  books  as  are  marked  with  an  asterisk,  has  been 
personally  examined  in  the  first  edition ;  and  of  those 


334  APPENDIX. 

BO  marked  only  two  (Numbers  1  and  78)  have  been  inac 
cessible  in  any  form. 

I.    POETBY.1 

1.  *  Monody  on  General  Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney.    (Charles 

ton,  1825.     16mo.  [?])     Anonymous. 

2.  Lyrical  and  Other  Poems.     (Charleston,  1827.     18mo.) 

3.  Early  Lays.     (Charleston,  1827.) 

4.  The  Vision  of  Cortes,  Cain,  and  Other  Poems.     (Charleston, 

1829.     16mo.) 

5.  *  The  Tri-Color,  or  The  Three  Days  of  Blood  in  Paris.    With 

Some  Other  Pieces.     (Charleston,  1830.     8vo.) 

6.  Atalantis :  a  Story  of  the  Sea.    In  Three  Parts.     (New  York, 

1832.     8vo.)     Anonymous. 

7.  Southern  Passages  and  Pictures.     (New  York,  1839.) 

8.  Donna  Florida.     A  Tale.     (Charleston,  1843.     16mo.) 

9.  Grouped  Thoughts  and  Scattered  Fancies.     A  Collection  of 

Sonnets.     (Richmond,  1845.) 

10.  Areytos,  or  Songs  of  the  South.     (Charleston,  1846.) 

11.  Charleston,  and  Her  Satirists.     A  Scribblement.     By  a  City 

Bachelor.  (Charleston,  1848.)  A  hasty  satire  in  reply  to 
a  pamphlet  entitled  "  Charleston,  a  Satire,"  by  a  female 
abolitionist  of  unknown  name. 

12.  Lays  of  the  Palmetto.     (Charleston,  1848.) 

13.  Atalantis :  a  Story  of  the  Sea.    With  the  Eye  and  the  Wing ; 

Poems  chiefly  imaginative.     (Philadelphia,  1848.) 

14.  The  Cassique  of  Accabee ;    a  Tale  of  Ashley  River.     With 

Other  Pieces.     (New  York,  1849.     Sq.  18mo.) 

15.  Sabbath  Lyrics,  or  Songs  from  Scripture.     A  Christmas  Gift 

of  Love.     (Charleston,  1849.     8vo.) 

16.  The  City  of  the  Silent.      (Charleston,    1850.     8vo.)      Poem 

delivered  at  the  Consecration  of  Magnolia  Cemetery  in 
Charleston,  November  19th,  1850. 

17.  Poems  Descriptive,  Dramatic,  Legendary,  and  Contemplative. 

(2  vols.     New  York  and  Charleston,  1853.) 

18.  Areytos,  or  Songs  and  Ballads   of  the  South.    With  Other 

Poems.  (New  York  and  Charleston,  1860.)  Much  fuller 
than  No.  10  of  this  list  and  contains  most  of  No.  12,  as 
well  as  a  few  revised  pieces  from  earlier  volumes. 

1  All  titles  represent  1  vol.  12mo.,  unless  the  contrary  is  indicated. 


APPENDIX.  335 

Dramas. 

19.  *  Norman  Maurice :  The  Man  of  the  People.     An  American 

Drama.     (Richmond,  1851.     8vo.) 

20.  Michael  Bonham,  or  The  Fall  of  Bexar.     A  Tale  of  Texas. 

In  Five  Parts.     By  a  Southron.     (Richmond,  1852.     8vo.) 

21.  Benedict  Arnold.    A  Dramatic  Essay.    (Richmond,  the  "  Mag 

nolia  Weekly,"  1863.) 

Edited  by  Simms. 

22.  A  Supplement  to  the  Plays  of  William  Shakespeare.     Com 

prising  the  Seven  Dramas,  etc.     (New  York,  1848.     8vo.) 

23.  War  Poetry  of  the  South.     (New  York,  1867.) 

II.  ROMANCES,  NOVELETTES,  AND  COLLECTED  STORIES. 
24  *  Martin  Faber.      (New  York,  1833.)      Anonymous.     Martin 
Faber.  the  Story  of  a  Criminal ;    and  Other  Tales.    (2  vols. 
New  York,  1837.) 

25.  The  Book  of  My  Lady :    a  Melange.    By  a  Bachelor  Knight. 

(Philadelphia,  1833.) 

26.  Guy  Rivers  :  a  Tale  of  Georgia.    (2  vols.     New  York,  1834.) 

27.  The  Yemassee :  a  Romance  of  South  Carolina.    (2  vols.    New 

York,  1835.) 

28.  The  Partisan:  a  Tale  of  the   Revolution.      (2  vols.     New 

York,  1835.) 

29.  Mellichampe  :  a  Legend  of  the  Santee.    (2  vols.   New  York, 

1836.) 

30.  *  Richard  Hurdis,  or  The  Avenger  of  Blood.   A  Tale  of  Ala 

bama.     (2  vols.     Philadelphia,  1838.)     Anonymous. 

31.  Carl  Werner:    an   Imaginative    Story;   with  Other  Tales  of 

Imagination.     (2  vols.     New  York,  1838.) 

32.  Pelayo:  a  Story  of  the  Goth.     (2  vols.   New  York,  1838.) 

33.  The  Damsel  of  Darien.     (2  vols.    Philadelphia,  1839.) 

34.  Border  Beagles;  a  Tale  of  Mississippi.     (2  vols.     Philadel 

phia,  1840.)     Sequel  to  "  Richard  Hurdis." 

35.  The  Kinsmen,  or  The  Black  Riders  of  the  Congaree.   A  Tale. 

(2  vols.     Philadelphia,  1841.)    Afterwards  known  as  "  The 
Scout."     (New  York,  1854.) 

36.  Confession,  or  The  Blind  Heart.      A  Domestic    Story.     (2 

vols.    Philadelphia,  1841.) 


336  APPENDIX. 

37.  Beaucharape,  or  The  Kentucky  Tragedy.    A  Tale  of  Passion. 

(2  vols.     Philadelphia,  1842.) 

38.  The  Prima  Donna :  a  Passage  from  City  Life.    (Philadelphia, 

1844.  8vo.)  A  short  story  (24  pages)  forming  the  first 
numher  of  "  Godey's  Library  of  Elegant  Literature." 

39.  Castle  Dismal,  or  The  Bachelor's  Christmas.      A  Domestic 

Legend.     (New  York,  1845.) 

40.  Helen    Halsey,    or  The    Swamp   State  of    Conelachita.      A 

Tale  of  the  Borders.  (New  York,  1845.)  Republished  as 
"The  Island  Bride,"  in  Munro's  "Fireside  Companion." 
(New  York,  1869.) 

41.  Count  Julian,  or  The  Last  Days  of   the  Goth.      'Baltimore 

and  New  York,  1845.    8vo.) 

42.  The  Wigwam  and  Cabin.     (2  vols.     New  York,  1845-46.) 

43.  Flirtation  at  the  Moultrie  House,  etc.     (Charleston,  1850.)    A 

short  skit  (46  pages)  describing,  in  the  letters  of  one  Miss 
Georgiana  Appleby,  a  ball  at  the  Moultrie  House  of  which 
Simms  was  a  manager. 

44.  Katharine  Walton,  or  The  Rebel  of  Dorchester.    An  Histo 

rical  Romance  of  the  Revolution  in  South  Carolina.  (Phil 
adelphia,  1851.  8vo.) 

45.  The  Golden  Christmas :  a  Chronicle  of  St.  John's,  Berkeley. 

Compiled  from  the  Notes  of  a  Briefless  Barrister.  (Charles 
ton,  1852.) 

46.  As  Good  as  a  Comedy,  or  The  Tennesseean's  Story.     Sy  an 

Editor.     (Philadelphia,  1852.) 

47.  *The  Sword  and  the  Distaff,  or  "Fair,  Fat,  and  Forty." 

(Charleston,  1852.)  Afterwards  known  as  "  Woodcraft,  or 
Hawks  about  the  Dovecote."  (New  York,  1854.) 

48.  Marie  De  Berniere :   a  Tale  of  the  Crescent  City,  etc.    (Phila 

delphia,  1853.)  Contains  besides  the  leading  tale  two 
stories,  "The  Maroon"  and  "Maize  in  Milk."  In  1855 
precisely  the  same  volume  was  issued  as  "  The  Maroon  :  a 
Legend  of  the  Caribbees,  and  Other  Tales."  "  Marie  De 
Berniere"  was  afterwards  issued  as  "The  Ghost  of  My 
Husband :  a  Tale  of  the  Crescent  City."  (New  York, 
1866.) 

49.  *  Vasconselos :  a  Romance  of  the  New  World.     (New  York, 

1854.)  Published  under  the  nom  de  plume  of  "  Frank 
Cooper." 


APPENDIX.  337 

50.  *  Southward  Ho  !  a  Spell  of  Sunshine.     (New  York,  1854.) 

51.  The  Forayers,  or  The  Raid  of  the  Dog-Days.     (New  York, 

1855.) 

52.  Charlemont,  or  The  Pride  of  the  Village.     A   Tale  of  Ken 

tucky.     (New  York,  1856.)  Sequel  to  "  Beaueharape." 

53.  Eutaw :  a  Sequel  to  the  Forayers,  or  The  Raid  of  the  Dog- 

Days.    A  Tale  of  the  Revolution.     (New  York,  1856.) 

54.  The  Cassique  of  Kiawah :   a  Colonial  Romance.     (New  York, 

1859.) 

55.  Paddy  McGann,  or  The  Demon  of  the  Stump.     (Richmond, 

the  "  Southern  Illustrated  News."     1863.) 

56.  Joscelyn:  a  Tale  of  the  Revolution.     (New  York,  the  "  Old 

Guard,"  1867.) 

57.  The  Cub  of  the  Panther :  a  Mountain  Legend.     (New  York, 

the  "Old  Guard,"  1869.) 

58.  Voltmeier,  or  The  Mountain  Men.    A  Tale  of  the  Old  North 

State.  (New  York,  the  "  Illuminated  Western  World," 
1869.)  Numbers  55,  56,  57,  58,  are  serials  which  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  published  in  book  form. 

III.  HISTORY  AND  BIOGRAPHY. 

59.  *  Memoir  of  Maynard  Davis  Richardson  in  "  The  Remains  of 

Maynard  Davis  Richardson,  with  a  Memoir  of  his  Life." 
By  his  Friend.  (Charleston,  1833.)  Simms  probably 
edited  this  volume. 

60.  *  The   History  of  South  Carolina,  etc.     (Charleston,  1840.) 

Second  edition,  enlarged.  (Charleston,  1842.)  Third  edi 
tion,  much  enlarged.  (New  York  and  Charleston,  1860.) 

61.  The  Geography  of  South  Carolina,  etc.     (Charleston,  1843.) 

Companion  volume  to  the  foregoing. 

62.  The  Life  of  Francis  Marion.     (New  York,  1845.) 

63.  *  The  Life  of  Captain  John  Smith,  the  Founder  of  Virginia. 

(New  York,  1846.) 

64.  The  Life  of  the  Chevalier  Bayard.     (New  York,  1847.) 

65.  The  Life  of  Nathanael  Greene.     (New  York,  1849.) 

66.  The  Lily  and  the  Totem,  or  The  Huguenots  in  Florida.    A 

series  of  Sketches,  Picturesque  and  Historical,  of  the 
Colonies  of  Coligm.  1562-1570.  (New  York,  1850.) 

67.  South  Carolina  in  the   Revolutionary  War.    By  a  Southron. 

(Charleston,  1853.) 


338  APPENDIX. 

68.  Memoir  of    Colonel  John  Laurens   in  "Memoir  and    Corre 

spondence  of  Colonel  John  Laurens."  (Bradford  Club  Se 
ries,  No.  1.  New  York,  1867.  4to  and  8vo.) 

IV.  MISCELLANEOUS. 

69.  Slavery  in  America,  being  a  Brief  Review  of  Miss  Martineau 

on  that  Subject.  By  a  South  Carolinian.  (Richmond,  1838. 
8vo.)  Appears  also  as  "  The  Morals  of  Slavery."  Simms'a 
contribution  to  "The  Pro-Slavery  Argument."  (Charles 
ton,  1852.) 

70.  The  Social  Principle :   the  True    Source  of  National  Perma 

nence.  (Tuscaloosa,  1843.  8vo.)  Oration  delivered  at 
the  University  of  Alabama,  December  13,  1842. 

71.  The    Sources    of    American    Independence.      (Aikin,    1844. 

8vo.)     Oration  at  Aikin,  S.  C.,  July  4,  1844. 

72.  The   Charleston   Book :    a  Miscellany   in   Prose   and   Verse. 

(Charleston,  1845.)  Simms  contributed  a  short  preface  and 
edited  the  volume,  which  appeared,  however,  without  his 
name. 

73.  Views  and  Reviews  in  American  Literature,  History,  and  Fic 

tion.  (2  vols.  New  York,  1845,  —  really  copyrighted  and 
published  in  1846.) 

74.  Self-Development.    (Milledgeville,  1847.    8vo.)    Oration  deliv 

ered  November  10, 1847,  at  Oglethorpe  University,  Georgia. 

75.  Father  Abbot,  or  The  Home  Tourist.     A  Medley.     (Charles 

ton,  1849.     18mo.) 

76.  Egeria,  or  Voices  of   Thought  and   Comfort  for  the  Woods 

and  Wayside.     (Philadelphia,  1853.) 

77-  Address  at  the  Inauguration  of  the  Spartanburg  Female  Col 
lege.  (Spartanburg,  1855.)  Address  delivered  August  22, 
1855. 

78.  *  The  Power  of  Cotton.1     (New  York,  1856.     8vo.) 

79.  Sack  and  Destruction  of  the  City  of  Columbia,  S.  C.,  to  which 

is  added  a  List  of  the  Property  destroyed.  Originally 
published  in  the  "  Columbia  Daily  Phoanix."  (Columbia, 
1865.)  Anonymous. 

1  Doubtful.  Simms's  name  is  written  on  the  copy  in  the  Boston  Public 
Library,  but  the  handwriting  is  not  that  of  Theodore  Parker,  to  whom  the 
pamphlet  originally  belonged. 


APPENDIX.  339 

80.  The  Sense  of  the  Beautiful.  (Charleston,  1870.  8vo.)  An 
address  delivered  before  the  Charleston  County  Agricul 
tural  and  Horticultural  Association,  May  3,  1870. 

V.  CHIEF  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  MAGAZINES. 
A  by  no  means  exhaustive  search  has  resulted  in  the 
collection  of  over  two  hundred  and  fifty  titles  of  poems, 
stories,  and  miscellaneous  articles  contributed  by  Simms 
to  various  magazines  and  annuals.  His  contributions 
to  newspapers  are  even  more  numerous,  ranging  as  they 
do  from  a  short  letter  as  country  correspondent  to  edi 
torials  and  reviews  three  and  four  columns  long.  Ob 
viously  the  most  part  of  these  ephemeral  productions 
should  be  left  to  oblivion,  and  the  following  list  will  be 
found  to  relate  mainly  to  such  of  his  more  elaborate 
articles  as  were  never  collected  in  permanent  form.  Up 
to  1851  Simms  was  in  the  habit  of  binding  for  his  own 
use  his  longer  articles  ;  after  this  date  his  contributions, 
at  least  to  his  own  review,  are  to  fee  determined  by  in 
ternal  evidence  only,  —  a  hazardous  procedure  which  has 
not  been  much  indulged  in  here. 

1.  American  Criticism  and  Critics.     (So.  Lit.  Jour.,  July,  1836.) 

2.  Logoochie,  or  the  Branch  of  Sweet  Water.   (Magnolia,  annual, 

1839.) 

3.  Early  Lays.     (Continued  in  So.  Lit.  Mess,  for  1839-41.) 

4.  Queen  Mary.     (Dem.  Rev.,  Feb.,  1842.) 

5.  Bulwer's  Genius  and  Writings.     (Magnolia,  Dec.,  1842.) 

6.  The  Writings  of  Washington  Allston.     (S.  Q.  R.,  Oct.,  1843.) 

7.  The  Moral  Character  of  Hamlet.     (Orion,   1844.) 

8.  Letters  on  International  Copyright.     (So.  Lit.  Mess.,  1844.) 

9.  The  New  Spirit  of  the  Age.     (S.  Q.  R.,  April,  1845.) 

10.  A  Year  of    Consolation.     (Review  of  Mrs.  Butler's  book,  S. 

Q.  R.,  July,  1847.) 

11.  John  Rutledge.    (Arner.  Whig  Rev.,  Aug.  and  Sept.,  1847.) 

12.  Prescott's  Conquest  of  Peru.   (S.  Q.  R.,  Jan.  and  April,  1848.) 


340  APPENDIX. 

13.  Stevens's  History  of  Georgia.     (S.  Q.  R.,  April,  1848.) 

14.  Headley's  Life  of  Cromwell.     (S.  Q.  R.,  Oct.,  1848.) 

15.  Modern  Prose  Fiction.     (S.  Q.  R.,  April,  1849.) 

16.  Guizot's  Democracy  in  France.     (S.  Q.  R.,  April,  1849.) 

17.  Later  Poems  of  Henry  Taylor.     (S.  Q.  R.,  July,  1849.) 

18.  Recent  American  Poets.     (S.  Q.  R.,  Oct.,  1849.) 

19.  Kennedy's  Life  of  Wirt.     (S.  Q.  R.,  April,  1850.) 

20.  Ellet's  Women  of  the  Revolution.     (S.  Q.  R.,  July,  1850.) 

21.  Sentimental  Prose  Fiction.     (S.  Q.  R.,  July,  1850.) 

22.  Tuckerman's  Essays  and  Essayists.     (S.  Q.  R.,  July,  1850.) 

23.  Summer  Travel  in  the  South.     (S.  Q.  R.,  Sept.,  1850.) 

24.  Topics  in  the  History  of  South  Carolina.     (S.  Q.  R.,  Sept., 

1850.) 

25.  The  Southern  Convention.     (S.  Q.  R.,  Sept.,  1850.) 

26.  Home  Sketches,  or  Life  along  the  Highways  and  Byways  of 

the  South.     (Continued  in  Literary  World  for  1852.) 

27.  Charleston,  the  Palmetto  City.     (Harper's  Mag.,  June,  1857.) 

28.  The  Story  of  Chastelard.     (Lippincott's  Mag.,  March,  1868.) 

29.  How  Sharp  Snaffles  got  his  Capital  and  Wife.      (Harper's 

Mag.,  Oct.,  1870.)  l 

The  following  articles,  of  some  interest  to  students  of 
Southern  history,  may  be  unhesitatingly  assigned  to 
Simms :  — 

1.  Pickett's  History  of  Alabama.     (S  Q.  R.,  Jan.,  1852.) 

2.  Domestic  Histories  of  the  South.     (S.  Q.  R.,  April,  1852.) 

3.  The  Baron  De  Kalb.     (S.  Q.  R.,  July,  1852.) 

4.  Literary  Prospects  of  the  South.     (Russell's,  June,  1858.) 

5.  Marion,  the  Carolina  Partisan.    (Russell's,  Oct.  and  Nov.,  1858.) 

In  this  connection  a  chronological  list  of  the  various 
publications  with  which  Simms  was  editorially  connected 
will  not  be  out  of  place.  They  are  all  Charleston  enter 
prises  save  Number  7. 

1.  The  Southern  Literary  Gazette.     (1828-29.) 

2.  The  City  Gazette.     (1830-32.) 

3.  The  Cosmopolitan,  an  Occasional.     (1833.) 

4.  The  Magnolia,  or  Southern  Apalachian.     (1842-43.) 

i  Reissued  as  "The  Big  Lie,"  in  "  Short  Stories,"  May,  1891. 


APPENDIX.  341 

j.  The  Southern  and  Western  Magazine  and  Review.     (1845.) 

6.  The  Southern  Quarterly  Review.     (1849-55.) 

7.  The  Columbia  Phoenix.     (1865.) 

8.  The  Daily  South  Carolinian.     (1865-66.) 

9.  The  Courier.     (1870.) 

Simms  was  also  for  many  years  correspondent  and 
reviewer,  perhaps  literary  editor,  of  the  "  Mercury." 

VI.  ENGLISH  RKPRINTS  AND  TRANSLATIONS. 

Reprints. 

1.  The  Tri-Color,  etc.     (London,  1830,  8vo.) 

2.  Guy  Rivers.     (*  London,  1835,  3  vols.    1841,  1  vol.  8vo.) 

3.  The  Yemassee.     (*  London,  1835,  3  vols.      1844,  1  vol.  8vo.) 

4.  The  Damsel  of  Darien.     (London,  1845,  1  vol.  8vo.) 

5.  The  Kinsmen.     (London,  1841,  1  vol.  8vo.) 

6.  Confession.     (London,  1845,  1  vol.  8vo.) 

7.  Beauchampe.     (London,  1842,  1  vol.  8vo.) 

8.  Count  Julian.     (London,  1846,  1  vol.  8vo.) 

9.  The  Wigwam  and  Cabin,  issued  as "  Life  in  America,  or  the 

Wigwam  and  the  Cabin."     (Aberdeen,  1848.) 

Simms's  review  of  Mrs.  Trollope  was  reprinted  in 
England  along  with  other  American  critiques  in  1833. 
(See  Allibone,  art.  Trollope,  Frances.) 

Translations. 

Allibone  says  that  many  of  Simms's  works  were  trans 
lated  into  French  and  German.  Inquiries  have  been 
made  in  Paris,  and  Lorenz's  "  Catalogue  de  la  Librairie 
Franchise  "  has  been  searched,  but  no  French  translation 
has  been  discovered.  According  to  Kayser's  "  Biicher 
Lexikon,"  the  following  German  translations  have  ap 
peared  :  — 

1.  The  Wigwam  and  Cabin.     (Wigwam  und  Hiitte.     Leipzig, 

1846.) 

2.  The    Yemassee.      (Der    Yemassee-Indianer.     Leipzig,   1847. 

2  Bde.) 


342  APPENDIX. 

In  the  "  Bibliothek  Amerikanische,"  Leipzig,  1853-64 : 

3.  Katharine  Walton.     (Nos.  26-29.) 

4.  Marie  de  Berniere.     (Nos.  62-64.) 

5.  The  Sword  and   the  Distaff.     (Schwert  und  Spindel.     Nos. 

100-104.) 

6.  Richard  Hurdis.     (Nos.  280-284.) 

7.  Guy  Rivers.     (Nos.  323-326.)      , 

8.  Border  Beagles.     (Die  Grenzjagd.    Nos.  333-337.) 

9.  The  Cassique  of  Kiawah.     (Der  Kassike  von  Kiawa.     Nos. 

396-400.) 
10.  The  Partisan.     (Der  Parteiganger.     Nos.  411-415.) 

Several  books  which  have  been  assigned  to  Simms  by 
his  bibliographers  have  been  omitted  from  the  above  lists 
for  reasons  which  cannot  be  given  in  detail.  They  are : 

1.  The  Star  Brethren  and  Other  Stories.     Simms  made  up  a  vol 

ume  of  short  stories  under  this  title,  but  Mr.  Davidson  seems 
to  be  the  only  authority  for  its  existence  in  printed  form. 

2.  Slavery  in  the  South.     (Richmond,  1831.)     Allibone  mentions 

this  pamphlet,  but  there  are  reasons  for  believing  that  he 
confused  it  with  "Slavery  in  America."  (Richmond,  1838.) 

3.  The  Battle  of  Fort  Moultrie  :  a  Discourse.      Allibone  seems  to 

be  the  sole  authority  for  this.  It  was  probably  a  lecture, 
and  may  have  remained  in  manuscript  as  other  lectures, 
such  as  "  Poetry  and  the  Practical,"  certainly  did. 

4.  The  Swamp  Robbers.     (1870.)     Attributed  to  Simms  by  the 

"  Literary  World."  (Oct.  21, 1882.)  This  may  have  been 
confounded  with  "  The  Island  Bride  "  or  "  Helen  Halsey," 
or  the  latter  story  may  have  really  changed  its  name  a  third 
time. 

Besides  the  above  Simms  has  been  wrongly  credited 
with  "Poems  of  a  Collegian"  (1833.  By  Thomas 
Semmes) ;  "  Rombert,  a  Tale  of  Carolina "  (1835. 
Anonymous)  ;  "Osceola,  etc."  (1838.  By  Seymour  R. 
Duke);  "Pelayo,  etc."  (1836.  By  Mrs.  Mowatt)  / 
Historical  and  Social  Sketch  of  Craven  County  (S.  Q.  R.> 
April,  1854.  By  Prof.  F.  A.  Porcher). 


INDEX, 


ABOLITIONISTS,  141, 181, 198,  224. 

Adams,  Dr.  C.  K.,  244. 

Addiaon,  Joseph,  45. 

"  Adrian  Beaufain,"  Siinrus'a  nom  de 

plume,  134. 
Aetius,  274. 
Aikin  (S.  C.),  Simms's    address  at, 

Alcott,  A.  Bronson,  198. 

Aldrich,  A.  P.,  64  note,  154,  282,  284. 

Aldrich,  Thomas  Bailey,  103. 

Alliboue,  S.  A.,  74  note. 

Allston,  Washington,  27, 156,  157  note. 

"  American  Quarterly  Review,"  73, 

84,  91. 
Anderson,  Maj.  Robert,  258,  259,  261, 

262  note. 

AndrtS,  Maj.  John,  138. 
"Appleton's  New  American  Cyclopae 
dia,"  11,  237. 
"  Appleton's  Cyclopaedia  of  American 

Biography,"  158  note. 
"  Areytos,"  144  ;  revised  edition,  243 

244. 
Arnold,  Gen.  Benedict,  138 ;  Simms's 

drama  on,  275. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  48,  325. 
Arthur's,  T.  8.,    "Home  Gazette," 

201. 

"  As  Good  as  a  Comedy,"  200,  201. 
"  Atalantis,"  11,  69,  70,  72,  73-76, 114, 

144,  206,  247. 
"Atlantic  Monthly,"  254  note,  308, 

320. 

Attila,  274. 
Audubon,  J.  J.,  27. 
Austin,  Arthur  W.,  304,  308,  312. 

BABCOCK,  James  F.,  77. 

Bachman,  Rev.  John,  27. 

Bailey,  James  H.,  303. 

Balboa,  Vasco  Nunez  de,  120. 

Bancroft,  George,  220. 

Barnwell    (9.   C.),   64  note,  95,  141, 

154,  280. 

Bassett,  Sailing-Master,  8. 
Beaconsfield,      Benjamin     D'Israeli, 

Earl  of,  320. 


Beauchamp,  Col.,  117. 

"  Beauchampe,"    116,    117-119,    123, 

125,  192,  211. 
Beauregard,  Gen.   P.  G.  T.,  261  note, 

279. 

Beecher,  Col.  James  C.,  291. 
Bird,  Dr.  R.  M.,  86,  91,  119,  207,  208, 

329 ;  his  "  Calavar,"  86 ;  "  The  In 
fidel,"  207  ;  "  Nick  of  the  Woods," 

91. 

Black  Crook,  The,  303. 
Blackstone,  Judge  William,  14,  44, 46, 

190. 

Blair,  Gen.  F.  P.,  Jr.,  283,  284. 
Bledsoe,  Prof.  A.  T.,  246. 
Bliss,  Col.  W.  W.  8.,  203. 
Boccaccio's  Decameron,  209. 
Bockie,   John  J.,  302,  323;    Simms's 

letters  to,  211,  253,  291,  292,  294, 

299-302. 

Bocock,  Thomas  S.,  243. 
Boker,  George  H.,  307,  308. 
Bonham,  Gen.  Milledge  L.,  215-217. 
"  Book  of  My  Lady,  The,"  82,  83. 
Boone,  Daniel,  Simms's  essay  on,  137. 
"  Border  Beagles,"  116,  120,  121,  315, 

328. 
Border  Romances,  the,  16,  87-89,  110, 

115-119,  150,  211. 
Border   States   in   the  Confederacy, 

263,  264. 
Boston  (Mass.),    Simms's    visits   to, 

304,  312. 

Bowie,  Col.  James,  215. 
Bradford  Club  Series,  303. 
Breckinridge,  J.  C.,  250. 
Briggs,  C.  F.,  158,  159. 
Brisbane,  Col.  A.  H.,  156,  167. 
"  Broadway  Journal,"  151,  159-161. 
Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  83,  94, 151, 

159,  160,  329 ;  his  "  Wieland,"  94. 
Browning,  Robert,  82 ;  Simms's  criti 
cism  of,  197. 
Bruns,  Dr.  J.  D.,  228,  230,  294,  296, 

308. 
Bryant,  William  Cullen,  49,  69,  70,  97, 

99,  120,  137,  154,  158,  219,  220,  323. 
Buchanan,  President  James,  249,  256. 


»  No  references  are  made  to  the  Appendix. 


344 


INDEX. 


Buckle,  H.  T.,  287. 

Buuyaii's    "Pilgrim's    Progress."    7, 

214. 
"  Burden  of  the  Desert,  The,"  Sunms's 

poem,  144. 
Burke,  Edmund,  36. 
Burns,  Robert,  295. 
Butler,  Mrs.  Fanny  Kemble,  71. 
Byron,  Lord,  7,  20,  143. 

CABLE,  G.  W.,  201. 

Cain,  W.  M.,  142. 

Caldwell,  H.  H.,  237,  238. 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  30,  59-61,  64,  155, 
166,  169, 182,  183,  190,  216,  319,  323, 
332. 

Campbell,  Justice  John  A.,  165. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  74,  297. 

Canada,  Simms's  speculations  about, 
123,  124. 

Carlisle,  W.  B.,  229. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  287. 

Carroll,  Charles  R.,  14,  66,  276. 

Carruthers,  Dr.  William  A.,  131. 

Cartwright,  Dr.  J.  W.,  165. 

Cass,  Lewis,  178,  256  note. 

"  Cassique  of  Accabee,  The,".  144. 

"  Cassique  of  Kiawah,  The,"  240-242. 

"  Castle  Dismal,"  150. 

Cavaliers,  Southern,  31-37,  146-148, 
289,297. 

Channing,  Prof.  Edward,  140. 

Chapin,  Rev.  E.  H.,  220,  221. 

Chapman's,  George,  "  Homer,"  46. 

"  Charlemont,"  118,  211. 

Charles  I.  of  England,  146,  147. 

Charles  Martel,  274. 

Charleston  (S.  C.),  Simms's  life  in,  1- 
14,  44-19,  52-55, 57-66,  83,  155,  156, 
227-229,  235-237,  292-299,  316-319 ; 
its  indifference  to  Simms,  16,  17, 
19,  20,  45,  46,  52,  55,  65,  68,  83,  128, 
129,  136,  156,  195,  238,  239,  244, 
245,  247,  266,  267,  307,  318,  319.  323, 
324  ;  as  a  literary  centre,  25,  45,  46, 
50,  51 ;  the  drama  in,  24,  47,  214- 
217,  314  ;  nullification  in,  28,  62-64 ; 
under  British  occupation,  192,  193 ; 
description  of,  in  1825,20,  21,  23- 
29 ;  in  1840-50,  155,  156  ;  in  1850- 
60,  229 ;  in  1865-70,  293,  294,  296, 
299-302. 

"  Charleston  Book,  The,"  50,  73. 

Charleston  "City  Gazette,"  47,  54, 
57,  63,  64,  68. 

Charleston  "  Courier,"  45,  142,  215, 
216,  230,  293,  295,  307,  317,  318,  319. 

Charleston  "Daily  South  Carolinian," 
262,  263. 

Charleston  "  Mercury,"  156,  217,  218, 
229,  232,  237,  251,  253,  268. 

Charleston  "  Times,"  2. 

"  Charleston  Year  Book,  The,"  (1883), 
261  note. 


Chartists,  186. 

Cherokees,  15,  91. 

Ch«ves,  Langdon,  182. 

ChevUlette,  Col.,  96. 

Clapp,  J.  M.,  132,  165. 

Classon,  Isaac  S. ,  119. 

Clay,  Henry,  62,  175,  183. 

Coffee,  Gen.  John,  13. 

Coligny,  Admiral  Gaspard  de,  196. 

Collins,  William,  235. 

Columbia  (8.  C.),  Simms's  residence 
in,  279;  burning  of,  280-282. 

Columbia  "  Phoenix,"  281,  282. 

Columbia  "  Telegraph,"  218. 

"  Confession,"  122-124. 

Congressional  Globe,  250. 

Cooke,  John  Esten,  103,  193,  194,  210, 
242,  297,  305;  his  "Mohun,"  194; 
"Surrey  of  Eagle's  Nest,"  194, 
297  ;  "  Virginia  Comedians,"  193 ; 
"  Wearing  of  the  Gray,"  194  note. 

Cooke,  Philip  Pendleton,  103,  104, 
146. 

Cooper,  J.  Fenimore,  49,  81,  83-S5, 
91,  92,  94,  111,  112,  157,  159,  160, 
241,  316,  329;  Simms's  essay  on, 
137  ;  his  "Last  of  the  Mohicans," 
94  ;  "  Spy,"  110  ;  "  Pathfinder,"  159. 

Cooper,  Dr.  Thomas,  56. 

Cooper,  Thomas  Anthorpe,  47. 

Copse  Hill  (Hayne's  residence), 
Simms's  visit  to,  298. 

Copyright,  Simms  on,  262. 

"  Cortes,  Cain,  and  Other  Poems,"  58. 

Cortes,  Hernando,  127,  209. 

"  Cosmopolitan,"  Simms's,  83. 

"  Cosmopolitan,"  (?),  317. 

Cotton  States,  policy  of,  263-265. 

"  Count  Julian,"  112, 114,  122,  125. 

Cowper,  William,  49. 

Crafts,  William,  26,  47,  60,  51. 

Creeks  (Indians),  9,  13,  15,  48,  91. 

Crockett,  Col.  David,  185,  215,  216. 

"  Cub  of  the  Panther,  The,"  311,  314, 
315. 

Cuba,  Simms's  views  as  to  the  acqui 
sition  of,  124,  207, 248. 

DABNEY,  Richard,  49. 

"Damsel  of  Darien,  The,"  120,  207, 

210. 

Dana,  Charles  A.,  230. 
Dana,  Richard  Henry,  Sr.,  157  note. 
Darley,  F.  O.  C.,  158,  210. 
Davis,  Jefferson,  166. 
DeBow,  J.  D.  B.,  132,  165. 
De  Fontaine,  F.  G.,  292,  293. 

De  Leon, ,  218. 

Democratic  party,   Simms's  views  of, 

248,  249. 

"  Democratic  Review,"  133,  158-160. 
De  Soto,  Fernando,  15,  207-209. 
Dew,  Prof.  Thomas  R.,  204. 
Dickens,  Charles,  201,  272. 


INDEX. 


345 


Dickinson,  George  K.,  200,  215. 

Dickson,  Dr.  8.  H.,  155,  229. 

"  Donna  Florida,"  143,  144. 

Dorchester  (8.  0.),  107,  108. 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  250,  251. 

Drake,  Dr.  Joseph  Rodman,  49. 

Drayton,  Michael,  297. 

Du  Boisgobey,  Fortune",  201. 

Duryea,  E.  8.,  57,  63,  65. 

Duyckinck,  Evert  A.,  134,  157,  158, 
210,  291,  292,  302 ;  his  "  Cyclopaedia 
of  American  Literature  "  written  for 
by  Simms,  212. 

"  EABLT  LAYS,"  53,  120,  247. 

"  Edge  of  the  Swamp,  The,"  (Simms's 
poem),  100. 

Edisto  River,  98,  100,  275,  309. 

Education,  in  the  South,  5,  6;  of 
women,  33. 

"  Egeria,"  206. 

Eliot,  George  (Mrs.  Cross),  118. 

Ellet,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  F.,  158. 

Elliot,  Stephen,  Sr.,  27,  55-57,  132. 

Elliott,  Rt.  Rev.  Stephen,  Jr.,  56, 246. 

Elliott,  William,  56. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  198. 

England,  her  interest  in  Southern  cot 
ton,  180,  188  ;  Simms's  romances 
read  in,  125, 126,  153,  320, 321. 

England,  Rt.  Rev.  John,  27. 

"  Eutaw,"  211-215. 

"  Eye  and  the  Wing,  The,"  144. 

FARMER,  H.  T.,  50. 

"  Father  Abbot,"  156,  203,  227. 

Fay's,  Theodore  8.,  "  Norman  Leslie," 
85,  160. 

Felton,  Prof.  C.  C.,  criticises  Simms, 
153. 

Ferris,  W.  H.,  302,  309 ;  Simms's  let 
ters  to,  291,  310. 

Feudalism  in  the  South,  31-37. 

Fields,  James  T.,  230,  308. 

Flint,  Rev.  Timothy,  74,  78,  80,  82 ; 
his  "Francis  Berrian,"  86. 

Fonblanque,  Albany  W.,  152. 

Fort  Moultrie,  25,  55,  156,  256,  257. 

Fort  Sumter,  256-261,  267,  283. 

Francis,  Dr.  J.  W.,  207,  220. 

"Frank  Cooper,"  Simula's  nom  de 
plume,  206,  207. 

Fraser,  Charles,  27,  156,  157  note. 

Fredericksburg,  Simms's  account  of 
the  battle  of,  272. 

Frederick  the  Great  of  Prussia,  96. 

GADSDEN,  Gen.  Christopher,  28. 
Garden,  Rev.  Alexander,  28. 
Garland's,  Hugh  A.,    "Life  of  John 

Randolph,"  182. 
Garrick,  David,  86. 
Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  288. 
Gates,  Gen.  Horatio,  106. 


Gates,  Mrs.,  3,  4,  8-10, 12, 14, 19,  67, 

68. 
Gayarre',  Judge  Charles  E.  A.,  158, 

297. 
Georgia,  politics  of,  179,  180, 182, 186, 

188. 
"  Ghost  of  my  Husband,  The."    See 

"  Marie  de  Berniere." 
Gibbes,  Dr.  R.  W.,  165,  281. 
"Gift,  The, "151. 
Gildersleeve,  Prof.   B.  L.,  229,  254, 

note. 
Giles,    Anna    Malcolm,    14 ;    marries 

Simms,  47  ;  her  death,  67,  68. 
Giles,  Othniel  J.,  47. 

Gilfert, ,  47. 

Oilman,  Mrs.  Caroline,  155. 

Gilman,  Rev.  Samuel,  155. 

Godey,  Louis  A.,  218,  219. 

"  Godey's  Lady's  Book,"  118, 131, 133, 

161,  191,  218. 
Godwin,  Parke,  158. 
Godwin,  William,  81, 122. 
"  Golden  Christmas,  The,"  195,  196, 

200,  215. 
Goldsmith's,  Oliver,  "  Vicar  of  Wake- 

fleld,"  7. 

"  Graham's  Magazine,"  104,  133,  159, 
"  Grayling,"  151, 152. 
Grayson,    William  J.,   156,   165,  229. 

230;    his    "Memoir    of    Petigru,*' 

62  ;  "  Hireling  and  the  Slave,"  175. 
Great    Harrington    (Mass.),   Simms'a 

visits  to,  70,  120,  158,  304. 
Greene,  Gen.  Nalhanael,  213 ;  Simms's 

life  of,  138-140. 
Grimkc*,  Thomas  8.,  27,  56,  60. 
Griswold,  Rev.  Rufus  W.,  49,  51,  69, 

73, 152  note. 
"Grouped   Thoughts    and    Scattered 

Fancies,"  144,  145. 
Guizot's,   F.  P.  G.,    "  Democracy  in 

France  "  reviewed  by  Simms,  190. 
Gunn,  James,  182. 
Gustavus  Yasa,  186. 

Guy  Rivers,"  85-89, 91, 114-116, 125, 

127,  247,  316. 

HALE,  Mrs.  Sarah  J.,  118. 

Hall,  Judge  James,  88  ;  his  "  Legends 

of  the  West,"  153. 
Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  49,  70,  157. 
Hammond,  Gov.  James  H.,  154,  164, 

178,  179,  183,  188  note,  204,  217, 249. 
Hammond,  Maj.  M.  C.  M.,  165,  189, 

203,  216,  217,  240,  296. 
Hamptons,  the,  partisans,  213. 
Harpers,  publishers,  70, 73,  77,  79,  85, 

110,  112. 

Harper,  James,  111. 
Harper,  Chancellor  William,  204. 
Harvey's,    Augustus,     "  Spectator," 

231. 
Hasell,  William  8.,  50. 


346 


INDEX. 


Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  152,  153,  159, 
198,  329  ;  his  "  Scarlet  Letter,"  198. 

Hayne,  Paul  Hamilton,  7,97, 101,  103, 
123,  148,  210,  224,  228-232,  242,  275, 
294,  297,  298,  308,  327,  331,  332  ; 
quoted,  25,  64,  143,  233,  238,  305, 
321,  322 ;  Simms's  letters  to,  275- 
279,  295,  2%,  301,  311-314,  316-318. 

Hayne,  Robert  Y.,  27,  323. 

Headley,  Rev.  James  T.,  134. 

"  Helen  Halsey,"   150,315-316. 

Henry,  Patrick,  22. 

Henry,  Rev.  Robert,  56. 

Hentz,  Mrs.  Caroline  Lee,  134. 

Herrick,  Robert,  124. 

Hicks,  Rev.  W.  W.,  313. 

Hingham  (Mass.),  Simula's  visit  to,  69. 

"  History  of  South  Carolina " 
(Simms's),  61,  120,  226,  242-245. 

Hoffman,  Charles  Fenno,  78,  79 ;  his 
"  Greyslaer,"  119. 

Holland,  Edwin  C.,  50. 

Holland,  George,  71. 

Holman, ,  47. 

Holmes,  Prof.  George  F.,  165. 

Hood,  Gen.  J.  B.,  229. 

Horace  (Quint us  Horatius  Flaccus), 
45. 

Horry,  Gen.  Peter,  213. 

Huger,  Alfred,  229. 

Hughes,  Henry,  218. 

Hunt,  Randell,  79. 

Hunter,  R.  M.  T.,  166,  250. 

"ILLUMINATED     WBSTRBN    WOBLD," 

312,  315. 

"  International  Magazine,"  200. 
Irving,  Washington,  49,  120,  153,  157, 

207,  300  ;  his  "  Salmagundi,"  83. 
"  Island  Bride,  The."    See  "  Helen 

Halsey." 
Izard,  Ralph,  167. 

JACKSON,  President  Andrew.  13, 62, 72. 
Jackson,  Gen.  Henry  R.,  165. 
Jackson,  Gen.  Thomas  J.  (Stonewall), 

Simms's  poem  on,  278. 
James,  G.  P.  R.,  97,  200,  332. 
Jamison,   Gen.  David,  154,  155,  165, 

178,  191,  211,  250, 255, 262  note,  265- 

267,  269,  275,  279,  308. 
Jefferson,  President  Thomas,  22,  53, 

172. 

Johnson,  Gov.  David,  142. 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  98. 
Johnston,  Gen.  Joseph  E.,  279,280. 
Jones,  William  A.,  158,  160,  165. 
Jonson,  Ben,  313. 
"  Joscelyn,"  295,  296,  299,  311. 
Judd's,  Rev.  Sylvester,  "Margaret," 

198. 

"KATHARINE  WALTON,"  108, 112, 125, 
191-193,  212. 


Keats,  John,  127. 

Kemble,  Miss  Fanny.  See  Mrs.  But 
ler. 

Kennedy,  J.  P.,  114, 329 ;  his  "  Horse 
shoe  Robinson,"  94,  107,  108. 

Key,  Francis  Scott,  49. 

King,  Mitchell,  156,  165,  229. 

King's,  William  L. ,  "  Newspaper  Press 
of  Charleston,"  64  note. 

"  Kinsmen,  The,"  120,  125,  159. 

Kirkland,  Mrs.  C.  M.,  158. 

"  Knickerbocker  Magazine,"  74,  78 
80,  84,  104,  151  note. 

Knight,  Charles,  135. 

LAFAYETTE,  Marquis  de,  14. 

Lanier,  Sidney,  75. 

Langtree,  Dr.  Samuel  Daly,  79,  80. 

Larne  (Ireland),  1. 

Laurens,  Col.  John,  Simms's  memoS 

of,  303. 

"  Lays  of  the  Palmetto,"  144. 
Lawson,  James,  70-72,  95,  99, 164, 159 

note,  243,  245,  304,   312,  323;  his 

"  Giordano,"  71. 

Lea  and  Blanchard,  publishers,  121. 
Lectures  (Simms's),  137,140,  206,  211, 

220-224,  310,  317,  318. 
Lee,  Lieut.-Col.  Henry,  213. 
Lee,  Miss  Mary  E.,  131. 
Lee,  Gen.  Robert  E.,  279,  285,  288. 
Lee's,  S.  Adams,  "Book  of  the  Son 
net,"  307. 
Legare-,  Hugh  8.,  26,  51,  52,  55-67,  60, 

68,  76,  132,  170  note,  246. 
LegarcS,  J.  M.,  134. 
Lesesne,  J.  W.,  165. 
"  Life  of  the  Chevalier  Bayard,"  126, 

138,  139. 
"Life  of  Captain  John  Smith,"  138, 

139. 

"  Life  of  Francis  Marion,"  138,  139. 
"Life    of    Nathanael   Greene,"    138- 

140. 

"  Lily  and  the  Totem,  The,"  196. 
Lincoln,  President  Abraham,  251, 252, 

288. 
Lippincott,  J.  B.,  307 ;  his  magazine, 


Locke,  John,  195. 

London  "Examiner,"  151, 152. 

London  "Metropolitan,"  74. 

"  London    Quarterly  Review,"    320. 

321. 

London  "Spectator,"  125. 
Longfellow,  H.  W.,  198,  230. 
Long  Island  Historical  Society,  303. 
Longstreet,  Judge  A.  B.,  131. 
Lord,  Samuel,  Jr.,  228,  301. 
"Lost  Pleiad,  The,"  Simms's  poem, 

58. 

Lovelace,  Col.  Richard,  146,  147,  235. 
"  Loves  of    the    Driver,   The,"   13L 

132. 


INDEX. 


347 


Lowell's,  J.  R.,  "  Fable  for  Critics," 

reviewed  by  Simms,  198. 
Lynch,  Rt.  Rev.  P.  N.,  165,  229. 
"  Lyrical  and  Other  Poems,"  48,  52. 

MACLAY,  William,  308. 
McClurg,  Dr.  James,  49. 
McCord,  Col.  D.  J.,  56,  165. 
McCord,  Mrs.  L.  8.,  165,  174-176. 
McDuffie,  George,  332. 
"Mad  Archy  Campbell,"  192. 
Magnolia  Cemetery,  Simms's  poem  on, 

196,  329. 

"  Magnolia  "  (Charleston),  131, 132. 
"  Magnolia  "  (Richmond),  275. 

Malcomson,  Rev. ,  2. 

Maltby, ,  78. 

"  Marie  de  Berniere,"  201,  295. 
Marion,  Gen.  Francis,  22,  28, 106, 107, 

110,  202,  213,  230  ;  Simms's  life  of, 

138,  139. 

Marshall,  Chief  Justice  John,  49. 
Martineau's,    Harriet,    "  Society    in 

America,"  reviewed  by  Simms,  114, 

115,  172. 
"  Martin  Faber,"  76-82,  85,  122,  123, 

210,  247. 

Maryland  authors  in  1825,  49. 
Matthews,  Cornelius,  157. 
Maury,  Commodore  M.  F.,  165. 
Mayer,  Brantz,  165. 
Mayo,  Dr.  W.  S.,  330. 
Means,  Gov.  J.  H.,  184,  188  note. 
Meek,  A.  B.,  131,  134,  158,  165,  328. 
"  Mellichampe,"  102,  108,  111,  112. 
Melville,  Herman,  330. 
Mexican  war,  143,  144,  165,  215. 
Mexico,  Simms's  schemes  about,  124, 

264. 
•*  Memoir  and  Correspondence  of  Col. 

John  Laurens,"  303. 
11  Michael  Bonham,"  201,  214-217. 
Michel,  Dr.  Richard,  228. 
Midway  (S.  C.),  97,  269,  280,  284. 
Miles,  Rev.  James  W.,  155,  165,  229, 

318,  319. 
Miles,  William  Porcher,  155,  165,  240- 

245,  248 ;   Simms's  letters  to,  248- 

268,  270-272. 
Mills's,  Clark,  statue  of  Washington, 

243. 
Milman's,  Rev. Henry  Hart,  "Fazio," 

71. 
Milton,    John,    75  ;    hia    "  Paradise 

Lost,"  329. 
Minor,  W.  G.,  165. 
Mississippi,  politics  in,  218. 
Missouri  Compromise,  59. 
Missouri  "  Republican,"  200. 
Mitchell,  D.  G.  (Ik  Marvel),  103. 
"  Monody  on  Gen.  Charles  Cotesworth 

Pinckney,"  45. 
Montrose,    James,    Marquis  of,   146, 

147. 


Moore,  Thomas,  7. 

"Moral  Character  of  Hamlet,  The," 
Simms's  articles  on,  133. 

Morpeth,  Lord  (George  William  Fred 
erick  Howard,  seventh  Earl  of  Car 
lisle),  129. 

Morris,  William,  235. 

Mortimer,  C.,  211. 

"  Mother  Goose,"  Simms's  revision  of, 
303. 

Muller,  A.  A.,  50. 

Munro's,  George,  "  Fireside  Compan 
ion,"  315. 

Murrell,  John  A.,  116, 117  note. 

NASHVILLE  Convention,  178,  179. 

Negro  character,  Simms's  treatment 
of,  132. 

Negroes  as  freedmen,  290-293,  301. 

New  England,  23,  55,  124,  153,  157 
note,  255,  264,  308  ;  colleges  of, 
6  ;  literature  of,  50 ;  authors  of, 
Simms's  views  about,  197,  198. 

"  New  England  Magazine,"  84. 

New  Haven  (Conn.),  Simms's  resi 
dence  in,  76-78. 

New  Orleans,  condition  of,  after  the 
war,  297,  308. 

New  Orleans  "  Delta,"  238. 

New  South,  the,  289,  290,  314. 

New  York  "  American,"  78,  79. 

New  York  city,  Simms's  visits  to,  69- 
72,  79, 80,  83,  89,  102,  110,  113,  119, 
157,  158,  220-224,  243,  291,  294,  304, 
309,  312. 

New  York  "  Evening  Post,"  222. 

New  York  "  Herald,"  220,  221. 

New  York  "Mercantile  Advertiser," 
70. 

New  York  "  Mirror,"  83,  89, 160. 

New  York  "  Times,"  223  note. 

New  York  "Tribune,"  220,  221,  225. 

"Nineteenth  Century"  (Charleston), 
313 

"Norman  Maurice,"  199,  200,  215. 

"North  American  Review,"  31  note, 
55,  56,  153,  164,  198,  242,  244. 

North  Carolina,  mountains  of,  209, 
210,  306. 

Northern  States,  progress  of,  22,  168 ; 
national  feeling  in,  169, 170 ;  politi 
cal  trimmers  in,  218,  219 ;  influence 
on  Simms,  76,  247,  248. 

Nott,  Prof.  H.  J.,  56. 

Nott,  Dr.  J.  C.,  165. 

Nullification,  30,  58-62,  72, 180,  183. 

OLD  GUARD,"  295,  296,  311,  315. 

Orion,"  133,  135. 
Orr,  Gov.  James  L.,  296. 
"Paddy  McGann,"  272,  275. 
"  Partisan,  The,"  94,  95,  102, 106-111, 

159,  192,  210. 
Pauldiug,  James  K.,  85,  158,  329. 


348 


INDEX. 


Peabody.C.  H.,79. 

Peacock's,   Thomas    Love,   "  Rhodo- 

daphne,"  49. 
Peisistratos,  30. 
"  Pelayo,"  112,  114, 122,  210. 
Pendleton,  P.  C.,  131. 
Percival,  James  Gates,  49. 
Perry,  Gov.  B.  F.,  165. 
Petigru,  James  Louis.  26,  60,  62,  156, 

229. 
Philadelphia    (Pa.),    Simms's    books 

published  at,  121 ;   indifference  to 

Boker,  307. 

Pickens,  Gen.  Andrew,  213. 
Pickett,  A.  J.,  328. 
Pierpont,  Rev.  John,  41,  321. 
Pike,  Albert,  134. 
Pinckuey,  Gen.  Charles  Cotesworth, 

27,  44,  45. 

Pinckney,  Rev.  C.  C.,  319. 
Pinckney,  Mrs.,  280,  283. 
Pinkney,  Edward  Coate,  49, 145. 
Piukney,  William,  49. 
Plato,  198. 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  44  note,  55,  71,  76, 

80,  81,  83,  103,  105.  109,  117,  120, 

149-153,  177, 192,  208,  234,  329,  330 ; 

his    "  Tamerlane,"    49  note  ;    his 

"Marginalia,"    159;    his    relations 

with    Simms,    158-161.      See    also 

"  Broadway  Journal." 
"Poems  Descriptive,"  etc.,  206. 
Poinsett,  Joel  R.,  27,  60,  165. 
Poole,  William  Laurens,  66. 
Pope,  Alexander,  45;  his  "Homer," 

46. 

Porcher,  Prof.  Fred.  A.,  165. 
Porclier,  Dr.  F.  P.,  228,  319,  321,322  ; 

Simms's  letters  to,  268,  269,  276. 
Porter,  B.  F.,  165. 
Postel,  Karl.    See  Sealsfield. 
Powers's,  Hiram,  statue  of  Calhoun, 

323. 

Prescott,  William  H.,  207. 
Preston,  William  C.,  203. 
"  Pro-Slavery  Argument,  The,"  204. 
Putnam,  Gen.  Israel,  205. 
"  Putnam's  Magazine,"  246,  248  note. 

QuiJf,  James,  Garrick's  lines  on,  86. 

RAMSAY,  Dr.  David,  65  note,  229. 
Ramsay,  David,  229. 
Randall,  James  R.,  147,  297. 
Randolph,  John  (of    Roanoke),   176, 

179,  182,  183. 
Rawdon,  Lord  Francis    (Marquis  of 

Hastings),  213. 

Redfield,  J.  S.,  207,  210,  247  note. 
Republican  party,  257. 
Requier,  A.  J.,  134. 
Reynolds,  F.   M.,  his   "  Miserrimus  " 

criticised  by  Simms,  77,  78. 


Revolutionary    documents,    Simms's 

collection  of,  302. 
Revolutionary  romances,  106-109, 201, 

211,  320,  327-332. 

Rhett,  R.  B.,  182,  183,  250,  251,  278. 
"  Richard  Hurdis,"  115,  116,  121,  150. 
Richards,  W.  C.,  133,  134,  231. 
Richardson,  Maynard  D.,  72 ;  Simms's 

memoir  of,  73. 
Richelieu,  Cardinal  de,  190. 
Richmond  (Va.),   Simms's  visits   to, 

177,  222. 

Richmond  "  Enquirer,"  295  note. 
Ritchie,  Thomas,  179,  295. 
Rivers,  Prof.  W.  J.,  242. 
Rives,  William  C.,  179. 
Roach,  Chevillette,  96,  97,  225,  239, 

269 ;  marries  Simms,  95  ;  her  death, 

276. 
Roach,    Edward,     marries     Simms's 

daughter  Anna,  240. 
Roach,   Mrs.    Edward.     See    Simms, 

Anna  Augusta. 

Roach,  Nash,  95-97,  99, 212,  225,  239. 
Roderick,    the    last    of    the    Goths, 

Simms's  tragedy  on,  14,  47,  112. 
Rowe,    Maj.     Daniel,    312 ;     marries 

Simms's  daughter  Chevillette,  293. 
Russell,  John,  229. 
"Russell's  Magazine,"  229,  230,232, 

237. 
Rutledge,  Chief  Justice  John,  22,  28. 

"  SABBATH  LYRICS,"  144, 145. 
Sabine,  Lorenzo,  Simms's  controversy 

with,  204,  205,  222  ;  his  "  American 

Loyalists,"  204. 
"  Sack  and  Destruction  of  the  City  of 

Columbia,  S.  C."  281,  283. 
Sands,  Robert  C.,  69,  70. 
Savannah  Convention  ignores  Simms, 

245-247. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  84,  92,  329. 
Scott,  Gen.  Winfield,  250  note. 
" Scout,  The."    See  "Kinsmen,  The." 
Sealsneld,     (Karl    Postel),     88 ;     his 

"  Courtship    of    Ralph     Doughby, 

Esquire,"  88  note. 
Secession,  30,  178,  180,  183,  244,  253, 

254,267. 

Sedgwick,  Miss  C.  M.,  70,  330. 
Selby,  Julian  A.,  282. 
Semmes,  Admiral  Raphael,  305,  320. 
"  Sense     of    the    Beautiful,    The,  " 

Simms's  address,  317,  318. 
Shakespeare,  William,  Simms's  views 

on  his  "  Othello,"  122,  123;  Simms 

edits   a    supplement   to  his   plays, 

135  ;   Simms's  study  of,    135,   136 ; 

Simms  adapts  his  "Timon"  for  the 

stage,    145 ;    Simms    annotates    his 

plays,  310 ;  Dana's  lectures  on,  157 

note. 


INDEX. 


349 


Shaler,  Prof.  N.  S.,  31. 

Sharpe,  Col.,  117,  118. 

Bhelley,  Harriet,  86. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  75,  86. 

Sherman,  Geu.  W.  T.,  279-281. 

Sidney's,  Sir  Philip,  "  Defence  of 
Poesy,"  144. 

Simmons,  James  W.,  53,  54,  57. 

Simmons,  William  H.,  165. 

Simms,  Anna  Augusta  ^rs.  Edward 
Roach),  53,  68,  120,  158,  240,  294, 
310,  313. 

Simms,  Chevillette  Eliza  (Mrs.  Rowe), 
154,  293,  308. 

Simms,  Eli,  1. 

Simms,  James,  1. 

Simms,  John,  3. 

Simms,  Matthew,  1. 

Simms,  William  Gilmore,  ST.,  1-4,  9, 
11-13,  15-17,  67-69,  97,  238,  324. 

Simms,  William  Gilmore  :  born  at 
Charleston,  1 ;  left  to  his  grand 
mother's  care,  4 ;  lack  of  schooling, 
4-6 ;  apprenticed,  9 ;  begins  to 
study  law,  14 ;  visits  the  Southwest, 
14-18 ;  settles  in  Charleston,  19  ; 
publishes  his  first  volume  of  poetry, 
44;  marries  for  the  first  time,  47; 
admitted  to  the  bar,  52 ;  begins  his 
editorial  career,  53 ,  becomes  an 
anti-nullifier,  59 ;  attacked  by  a  mob, 
63;  gives  up  his  newspaper,  65; 
second  journey  to  the  Southwest, 
67  ;  domestic  losses,  67,  68 ;  makes 
his  first  visit  North,  69 ;  publishes 
"Atalantis,"  73;  makes  his  first 
venture  in  fiction,  76;  becomes  a 
successful  romancer,  83;  marries  a 
second  time,  95 ;  takes  up  his  resi 
dence  at  Woodlands,  96  ;  new  lit 
erary  work,  112  ;  becomes  an  editor 
once  more,  131 ;  elected  to  the  legis 
lature,  141;  delivers  political  ha 
rangues,  141,  142 ;  takes  charge  of 
the  "  Southern  Quarterly  Review," 
163-165 ;  conducts  a  political  corre 
spondence  with  Beverley  Tucker, 
178,  188  ;  becomes  a  romancer  once 
more,  191  ;  has  a  controversy  with 
Sabine,  204,  205 :  has  a  play  per 
formed  in  Charleston,  214-217  ;  fails 
as  a  lecturer  in  New  York,  220-224 ; 
begins  to  lose  his  health,  224-226 ; 
loses  his  two  sons  by  yellow  fever, 
240 ;  approves  of  the  secession  of 
South  Carolina,  252 ;  makes  sugges 
tions  as  to  the  bombardment  of  Fort 
Sumter,  255-262  ;  has  his  house  at 
Woodlands  burned  for  the  first  time, 
269-271 ;  loses  his  wife,  276 ;  is  pres 
ent  at  the  sack  of  Columbia,  281, 
282  ;  has  his  dwelling  burned  a  sec 
ond  time,  280,  283,  284;  edits  the 
"Phoenix,"  282,  283;  returns  to 


Charleston  and  lives  in  poverty, 
292 ;  meditates  removing  to  the 
North,  293-295,  308 ;  visits  Hayne  at 
Copse  Hill,  298 ;  labors  to  relieve 
the  Charleston  poor,  302,  304;  re 
builds  at  Woodlands,  309;  over 
works  himself  on  three  romances, 
310-313 ;  goes  to  Charleston  to  die, 
314  ;  last  illness  and  death,  318 ;  his 
funeral,  319 ;  his  bust  erected,  321, 
322. 

His  boyish  verses  and  reading,  6 ; 
his  sickly  childhood,  10,  64 ;  influ 
ence  of  his  father's  and  grandmo 
ther's  stories,  8,  9,  12,  324;  influ 
ence  of  his  border  journeys,  15,  16  ; 
views  as  to  his  own  poetry,  43,  44, 
127  ;  his  knowledge  of  Indian  char 
acter,  91 ;  his  lack  of  scholarship, 
136,  140 ;  his  love  of  the  drama,  71, 
135,  136,  216 ;  his  conscientiousness 
as  a  writer,  75,  91,  191,  192,  211 ;  his 
success  in  treating  humble  charac 
ters,  109,  132,  193 ;  his  genre  work, 
195,  196 ;  his  careless  literary  habits, 
82,  85,  110,  111,  325 ;  his  fecundity 
in  composition,  115,  126,  135,  143, 
197,  236 ;  his  knowledge  of  military 
affairs,  255-261,  265-267,  271,  272 ; 
his  knowledge  of  botany,  268,  269 ; 
his  political  aspirations,  141-143, 
203  ;  his  criticism  of  the  aristocracy, 
129,  193-195;  his  appearance  in  1831, 
64 ;  in  1847, 142-143 ;  his  hospitality 
and  kindness,  97,  98,  114,  294,  299, 
301, 302,  325 ;  general  conclusions  as 
to  his  character  and  work,  324-332 ; 
his  children  not  named  in  index, 
119,  154,  239,  240,  242,  268,  276,  304, 
314,  328.  See,  also,  Charleston,  Lec 
tures,  New  York,  and  Slavery. 

Simms,  William  Gilmore,  Jr.,  239, 253, 
276,  277,  293,  300,  308,  312. 

"Simms's  Magazine,"  134,  160. 

Singleton,  Harriet,  2, 67,  324  ;  marries 
W.  G.  Simms,  Sr.,  2 ;  her  death,  3. 

Singleton,  John,  2,  3,  65  note. 

Singleton,  Thomas,  65  note. 

Slavery,  22,  24,  31,  59, 158, 180,  223 ; 
on  Simms's  plantation,  99  ;  views  of 
Simms  and  others  on,  167,  172-176; 
252,  254  note ;  262,  265  ;  its  general 
effects  on  the  South,  37-41  ;  its  in 
fluence  on  Southern  literature,  50, 
51,  56, 105,  246  ;  in  South  Carolina, 
171, 172  ;  attitude  of  Virginia  states 
men  towards,  40,  171 ;  its  relations 
to  politics,  167-170 ;  the  chief  cause 
of  the  war.  170  note,  251,  252,  254 
note,  274,  2fc6. 

Smith,  Judge  William,  59,  177. 

Smollett,  Dr.  Tobias,  203. 

South  Carolina,  common  schools  In, 
4-6 ;  in  the  revolutionary  war,  8, 


350 


INDEX. 


106, 107, 121,  202,  204,  205 ;  its  rela 
tion  to  Charleston,  23;  inconsist 
encies  of  its  people,  29,  30,  42 ; 
nullification  in,  58-62 ;  politics  in, 
180-183,  187 ;  effects  of  its  history 
on  Simms,  53,  90. 

South  Carolina  College,  Simms  pro 
posed  for  president  of,  203. 

South  Carolina  Jockey  Club,  26. 

"  South  Carolina  in  the  Revolutionary 
War,"  204,  205,  220. 

Southern  Confederacy,  projects  for, 
178, 179,  184-189, 210,  249,  250. 

Southern  conventions,  178,  179,  245- 
247. 

"Southern  Illustrated  News,"  272, 275. 

Southern  literature,  in  1825,  49-52; 
drawbacks  to,  104,  165,  113,  232  ; 
Savannah  Convention  on,  246.  See 
Slavery. 

11  Southern  Literary  Gazette " 
(Simms's),  54,  55,  76, 135. 

"  Southern  Literary  Gazette  "  (Rich- 
ards's),  231. 

"  Southern  Literary  Journal."  102, 
103,  131. 

*'  Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  94, 
103-105,  114,  120,  134,  145,  182,  199, 
215,  225,  262. 

"  Southern  Passages  and  Pictures," 
119. 

Southern  Poetry  and  Poets,  75,  76, 
145-149,  234,  297. 

"  Southern  Poetry  of  the  War,"  295- 
297. 

•'Southern  Quarterly  Review,"  113, 
m-134,  163-166,  173,  175,  177,  182, 
190,  196-198,  204,  211,  212  note. 

"  Southern  Review,"  26,  27,  52,55-57, 
132. 

"  Southern  Society  "  (Baltimore),  306, 
312. 

Southern  States,  decay  in  power  of, 
22,  23 ;  characteristics  of,  before  the 
war,  31-42 ;  hospitality  in,  33,  34, 
97  ;  political  literature  of,  190 ;  poli 
tics  of,  in  1860,  249-251.  See,  also, 
Southern  Literature,  and  Southern 
Poetry  and  Poets. 

"  Southron,"  131. 

"  Southward  Ho  !  "  70,  209,  210. 

Spanish  history,  its  effects  on  Simms, 
112,  119,  207. 

Spierin,  George  Heartwell,  50. 

"  Star  of  the  West "  fired  on,  255  note, 
256 

Stark,  Gen.  John,  205. 

States-rights,  56,  59,  60,  167,  168,  170, 
171,  244,  246,  251,  252. 

Btedman,  E.  C.,  46, 146. 

Stephens,  Alexander,  H.,  166,  182. 

Stevens,  Col.  C.  H.,  261,  262  note. 

Stewart,  Col.  Alexander,  213. 

Stewart,  Virgil  A.,  116. 


Stowe's,  Mrs.  H.  B.,  "TTncle  Tom's 

Cabin,"  175, 219. 
Suckling,  Sir  John,  146,  147. 
Sullivan's  Island,  25,  156. 
Summerville  (S.C.),  Simms's  residence 

at,  48,  67,  72. 

Sumner,  Charles,  220-224. 
Sumter,  Gen.  Thomas,  28,  213. 
"  Supplement  to  the  Plays  of  William 

Shakespeare,  A,"  155,  156. 
"Sword  and  the  Distaff,  The,"  201- 

203. 

TABKB,  -William  R.,  229. 

"Tablet,  The,"  53,  54. 

Tacitus'  "  Germania,"  32. 

Tarleton,  Col.  B.,  106. 

Taylor,  President  Zachary,  203. 

Tefft,  I.  K.,  302. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  235 ;  his 
"  Locksley  Hall "  quoted,  290. 

Texas,  the  annexation  of,  123,  124, 
141,  182 ;  exploits  of  Crockett  and 
others  in,  215,  216. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  262. 

Thompson,  John  R.,  97,  103,  104, 182, 
225. 

Thornwell,  Rev.  J.  H.,  212  note. 

Ticknor  and  Fields,  publishers,  308. 

Timrod,  Henry,  147,  148, 224, 227, 228, 
230,  231,  233-235,  277,  278,  292,  293, 
295-297,  300,  301,  306,  308. 

Timrod,  William  H.,  233. 

Toombs,  Robert,  166, 182. 

Translations  of  Simms's  works,  127, 
153. 

Travis,  Col.  William  B.,  215. 

Trescot,  William  H.,  165. 

"Tricolor,  The,"  58. 

Trollope's,  Mrs.  F.  E.,  "Domestic 
Manners  of  the  Americans,"  re 
viewed  by  Simms,  73. 

Tucker,  Beverley,  113,  165,  166, 176, 
177, 181, 182,  217,  240,  245,  248  ;  his 
"  George  Balcombe,"  177  ;  "  Par 
tisan  Leader,"  177  ;  his  letters  to 
Simms,  182-188 ;  Simms's  letters  to, 
178-183. 

Tuckerman,  Henry  T.,  157, 165. 

Tupper,  Martin  F.,  320. 

Tupper,  Samuel  Y.,  64  note,  228,  235, 
236,  320  note. 

Turnbull,  R.  J.,56. 

UNIVERSITY  of  Alabama,  Simms's  ad 
dress  at,  15,  140. 

"  VASCONSELOS  "  206-209. 

"  Views  and  Reviews,"  137, 138. 

Virginia,   her  literature  in  1825,  49  ; 

politics  in,  179,  181,  185,  186.    See 

Slavery. 
Virginia  and   Kentucky  resolutions, 

60. 


INDEX. 


351 


•'  Voltmeier,"  310,  312,  315. 

WAR,  the  civil,  Southern  views  of, 

273,   274 ;   its    causes  and   results, 

285-290 ;  Simms's  life  during,  255- 

285.    See  Slavery. 
"War  of   the  Rebellion,  The,"  261 

note. 
Ward's,  J.  Q.  A.,  bust  of  Simms,  64, 

323. 
Washington,  President  George,  22, 40, 

138,  172,  265. 

Watts,  W.  Theodore,  145,  331. 
Weathersf  ord,  William,  13. 
Webster,  Daniel,  27,  170,  227. 
Weems,  Rev.  M.   L.,  Simms'a  essay 

on,  137. 
West  Indies,  schemes  of  annexation 

of,  124. 

Wetmore,  Prosper  M.,  158. 
Whaley,  B.  J.,  228. 
"  Whig  Review,"  117  note. 
Whittaker,  Daniel  K.,  102, 103, 132. 
White,  Thomas  W.,  103,  114. 
Whitefleld,  Rev.  George,  28. 
"  Wigwam  and  Cabin,  The,"  160-153, 

160, 161. 
Wilde,  K.  H.,  50,  HO,  158. 


William  and  Mary  College,  176. 

Wilson,  Gen.  James  Grant,  158,  219, 
247  note,  320  note. 

Wilson,  Prof.  John  (Christopher 
North),  156. 

Wilson,  William,  158. 

Winsor's,  Justin,  "Narrative  and 
Critical  History  of  America,"  140 
note. 

Wirt,  William,  49,  52,  246. 

"  Woodcraft."  See  "  Sword  and  the 
Distaff,  The." 

Woodlands,  Simms's  residence,  de 
scription  of,  96-101 ;  plantation  los 
ses  at,  225  ;  left  to  Simms,  239  ;  in 
war  times,  268,  278,  279 ;  first  burn 
ing  of,  269-271 ;  second  burning  of, 
280, 283,  284  ;  after  the  war,  293, 309, 
312 ;  Simms's  last  year  at,  310-313. 

Wordsworth,  William,  58,  145,  149, 
235. 

YANCBT,  W.  L.,  166. 

Teadon,  Richard,  155,  210,  317. 

"  Yemassee,  The,"  63,  89-94, 102, 125, 

127,  226,  241,  247. 
Yonkers(N.  Y.),  Simms  visits  Lawson 

at,  304. 


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